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SUCCESS 

IN LIFE INSURANCE 



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SUCCESS 

IN LIFE INSURANCE 


BY 

EMMET C. MAY 

President Peoria Life Insurance Company 



PUBLISHED BY 

THE ROUGH NOTES COMPANY 
INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA 


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Copyrighted 1918 
by 

Emmet C. May 


MAV 28 1918 


©CI.A499140 


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To the Agents of the Peoria Life, 
that Happy Family of Successful Agents, 
this volume is respectfully dedicated. 























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FOREWORD 

It was not my intention to write a 
book, and truly I have not done so. 
I have merely assembled one. The 
following pages which constitute this 
volume are the talks and speeches de¬ 
livered by me, chiefly at conventions 
and gatherings of the agents of the 
Peoria Life Insurance Company. 
Some of them were dictated and writ¬ 
ten after their delivery, and per¬ 
chance may not now be recognized. 

In putting them into print it is 
with the hope that the reader may 
find some idea or some inspirational 
thought which may lift him up a little 
bit higher in his Business of Life In¬ 
surance, other than which there is no 
greater and nobler business in all the 
world, and that he may the more fully 
realize the superiority of Life Insur¬ 
ance Salesmanship. If this little 


volume accomplishes this in the small¬ 
est degree, I shall be amply paid and 
well satisfied. 

EMMET C. MAY. 

Peoria, Illinois, April 16, 1918. 


CONTENTS 


Chapter 

Page 

I. 

General History _ _ 

. — 13 

II. 

Mortality Tables __ 

. — 25 

III. 

Organization of Companies. 

39 

IV. 

State Supervision __ . 

. __ 59 

V. 

Life Insuraance as a Profession 67 

VI. 

Territory _ _ 

. _ 79 

VII. 

Self Confidence _ . 

... 87 

VIII. 

The Agent's Attitude in 

the 


Canvass 

. _ 101 

IX. 

Modem Life Insurance Estates 109 

X. 

The Agent a Public Benefactor_123 

XI. 

Duty to Policyholders. 

.___137 

XII. 

Organizing for Success 

.—165 

XIII. 

What Constitutes a Success- 


ful Agent _ _ _ 

_193 

XIV. 

Our Duty to Our Country.. 

.—241 






















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Life Insurance 
General History 









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CHAPTER I 


Life Insurance 
General History 

It is a long ways back to the be¬ 
ginning of the first life insurance in 
the world. In fact, it goes away back 
to the time of the pyramids. As Tal- 
mage has so splendidly told us, the 
first life insurance was divinely or¬ 
ganized and that God himself was the 
originator. It is a nice story that he 
tells of the first insurance project. 
When Joseph foresaw the condition 
of his land he went down into Egypt 
and procured one-fifth of the crops for 
the seven prosperous years and kept 
them as provision against hard times 
for the seven years in which he figured 
that there would be no crops. This, 
Talmage tells us, was the first life in¬ 
surance company—the first life in- 
15 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


surance project when some one looked 
to the future and made provision for 
it. 

After that time we found many in¬ 
surance societies in Greece, Rome and 
in Holland. Most of them were based 
entirely upon fraternal ideas. Few, 
if any, ever tried to operate upon 
scientific principles or to recognize 
any mortality tables. Be that as it 
may, the insurance societies and com¬ 
panies were of little consequence un¬ 
til they were developed in England. 
At one time they flourished there to 
quite an extent, and it is singular that 
at that time the same premium was 
charged for each person regardless of 
age, but ultimately insurance came to 
be recognized to be for the insurance 
of human lives instead of a mere 
wager. With this idea in view, they 
soon came to recognize the difference 
in ages in insuring and the differences 
of premiums that should be contrib¬ 
uted by the insured according to his 
16 


GENERAL HISTORY 


age. For a time several mortality 
tables were made up and experimented 
with, many of them proving after¬ 
wards to be more or less incorrect. At 
the beginning of the 17th century fra¬ 
ternal societies was the only kind of 
life insurance of consequence. In 1720 
just a century after the landing of the 
Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth Rock, 
the first Legal Reserve life insurance 
company was organized, and was 
known as the London Assurance 
Company. 

It is an important fact that this 
company is still in existence and still 
operating as a Legal Reserve Old Line 
life insurance company, and has come 
up through all these years with all 
the changes that have been in life in¬ 
surance since its very beginning. This 
is a splendid tribute to Old Line Life 
Insurance that the first company that 
was ever started, the first one that 
ever issued a policy guaranteeing a 
definite sum at death, is still doing 
* 17 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 

business, but it was not until 1750 
that they had worked out for this 
company a plan of insuring according 
to a table of mortality and charging 
rates according to the expectancy of 
that table, and in that year one James 
Dodson, who was refused a policy be¬ 
cause he was over the age that they 
insured in this company, decided to 
establish a company which rated 
members according to their ages and 
according to ideas that he had. 

Consequently in that year he or¬ 
ganized the Equitable Assurance So¬ 
ciety of London, and that company is 
still in existence doing business. 
After that time certain societies 
sprang up in the United States, but 
it was not until 1759 that the first Old 
Line Legal Reserve Company was 
chartered in the United States, and 
that was started in Philadelphia and 
known as the Presbyterian Ministers’ 
Life Fund. That was the first Legal 
Reserve life insurance company in 


18 


GENERAL HISTORY 

the United States, and that company 
is still doing business; is now in good 
flourishing condition; has never at¬ 
tained a very large volume of busi¬ 
ness, having limited its business en¬ 
tirely to Presbyterian ministers. Its 
whole amount of insurance in force 
now is a trifle over $23,000,000.00, but 
it has assets of some $7,000,000.00, 
and this too is a splendid tribute to 
life insurance in the United States 
to find that the first company that was 
ever started here has weathered all 
the storms of legislation and business 
projects and otherwise and still stands 
as a solid monument to the business. 

From that time up until 1850 only 
nine companies were established in 
the United States. Today there are 
almost 300 Legal Reserve life com¬ 
panies, and a great majority of them 
doing good business scattered over the 
entire United States. Within the 
memory of those living today the 
Legal Reserve life insurance of this 
19 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 

country was carried on from the At¬ 
lantic coast. Most of the companies 
were located in New York and Mass¬ 
achusetts. After the insurance in¬ 
vestigation in 1897-8 many com¬ 
panies sprang up all over the country, 
some of them good and some bad, but 
out of all that investigation there was 
left standing out clear against the 
western horizon a stronger and 
greater financial institution than had 
ever been known in the world—Old 
Line Legal Reserve insurance—and 
the roots of this great financial insti¬ 
tution extended down to the solid 
earth of almost every state in the 
union. The Mississippi valley was 
fairly dotted with companies. 

The cry went up that there would 
be too many companies; that they 
could not exist; that small companies 
could not furnish insurance, and that 
they were not so good. It has been 
absolutely proven in the operation of 
these companies that they have been 
20 


GENERAL HISTORY 


good for the country and for the in¬ 
sured. During all that time not one 
of them but what has met its legal 
obligations; not one single policy¬ 
holder has lost a dollar in the way of 
death claims on an insurance policy 
issued by any of them. Whether 
they have been successful enough to 
build up and continue as individual 
institutions or whether they have com¬ 
bined with some other company or re¬ 
insured with another company, no 
policyholder has lost any of his pre¬ 
miums paid on the policies so far as 
death claims are concerned, and to¬ 
day this Legal Reserve life insurance 
of these companies operating in the 
United States totals over Twenty- 
three Billions of Dollars, with assets 
of almost Seven Billions. This is not 
taking into consideration fraternal 
insurance or other forms of assess¬ 
ment insurance. 

When we try to imagine this great 
institution of life insurance we find 


21 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


that it is entirely beyond comprehen¬ 
sion. We try to find something with 
which to compare it so as to arrive 
at its greatness, and we take the total 
money of the entire United States 
and find that it will not reach the 
assets of these companies by over one 
billion dollars. The total money of 
the United States is a little over three 
and a half billions.. The gold is only 
a little over two and a half billions. 
So we can see that the assets of the 
Legal Reserve life insurance of this 
country is more than the money of 
our Government. With the assets of 
the Legal Reserve companies in the 
United States could be purchased the 
capital stock of every bank, paying 
book value for the stock and then the 
insurance companies would have al¬ 
most three billions of dollars left. 

Is it any wonder then that we see 
today attached to this great financial 
institution the best type of salesmen 
that there is? Is it any wonder that 
22 


GENERAL HISTORY 


the general agencies of these com¬ 
panies are filled by the biggest and 
brainiest men of the country, and that 
positions on boards of directors and 
other official positions of the com¬ 
panies are eagerly sought by men who 
are in the front ranks among the 
capitalists of our country and of the 
world ? The institution of life insur¬ 
ance that we have today is second to 
no other business or calling, and it is 
one which every man should be proud 
to claim as his vocation. 


23 



Mortality Tables 










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CHAPTER II 


Mortality Tables 

In the year 222 A. D. a Roman made 
up a mortality table. This table that 
he made showed the mortality a great 
deal shorter than it is today—more 
than 10 years shorter. For instance, 
a person from 35 to 50 years had an 
expectancy of 20 years, whereas at 
age 35 today, under the American Ex¬ 
perience Table, his expectancy is 32 
years. Many other tables were issued 
from time to time, and experienced 
with, but never to any degree of suc¬ 
cess until the subject was finally taken 
up in the United States in 1858, and 
there was compiled at that time what 
was then known and is yet known as 
the American Experience Table of 
Mortality. 

It was recognized that the life of 
an individual is uncertain, but that 
27 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 

the average life of a collection of in¬ 
dividuals is certain. In other words, 
the number of deaths is known, but 
the order of death is unknown. This 
table was made up and passed upon 
by the observation of 100,000 healthy 
lives beginning at the age of 10, and 
noting the number of deaths each year 
to the age of 96, when the last man 
was presumed to die. This table is 
the foundation upon which all life in¬ 
surance companies in the United 
States are based and their policy con¬ 
tracts construed. From this table all 
premiums are calculated. We find by 
consulting the table that at age 35 the 
rate of mortality is approximately 
nine to the thousand. That is the 
company is expected to have nine 
deaths out of a thousand members for 
the first year. Of the survivors at age 
50 there is expected to be 12 losses, 
and at 60,19, and so on to the end of 
the table. There may not be nine 
deaths the first year. There may not 
28 


MORTALITY TABLES 

be the number of deaths according to 
this table the second or third year, but 
over the entire period the inevitable 
law of average will work out the 
American Experience Table pretty 
accurately, sufficiently so that it has 
been found correct enough to make as 
the basis of the Legal Reserve insur¬ 
ance of the United States and so much 
so that it is known as the most cor¬ 
rect and scientific business in the 
world. 

In order to see how the rates are 
made, take for example an ordinary 
life policy and assume that we have 
one thousand members at age 35, and 
know that the death rate expected for 
that first year is nine; the entire mem¬ 
bers would be required to pay $9.00 in 
advance in order to provide funds 
from which to pay the thousand dol¬ 
lars to each of the beneficiaries of the 
nine members who died that year; 
and at age 50 they must pay $14.00 in 
advance to provide funds for the'bene- 
29 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


ficiaries of the twelve members who 
Avould die that year, and so on. 

So we find that in making up the 
rates on an ordinary life policy, tak¬ 
ing as a basis age 35, the company 
must have a sum of money, which in¬ 
vested at 3 1 / 2 % interest will make one 
thousand dollars for the beneficiary 
of the insured at the end of his ex¬ 
pectancy, which is 32 years. In other 
words, he must pay in each year a 
sufficient sum of money which the 
company must invest at compound in¬ 
terest at 31 / 2 %, so that it will earn him 
in 32 years $1,000.00 in money. On 
the ordinary life policy of course the 
insured pays for his entire life time. 
Under modern laws the states, and 
especially the state of Illinois, fixes 
the table of mortality under which the 
companies must operate as the Amer¬ 
ican Experience Table, and fixes the 
rate of interest at 3%%• 

That necessarily fixes the minimum 
premium to be charged by the com- 
30 


MORTALITY TABLES 


pany, and to this amount required for 
the mortality must be added the 
amount required for the expense load¬ 
ing of the company. The premium 
never can, under the law, be any less 
than that provided by the American 
Experience Table at 3%%. It could 
be as much more as the company 
deemed advisable to make it and 
which competition would permit, but 
it could never be any less. This re¬ 
serve element of the premium under 
modern laws belongs to the insured. 
It must be invested in interest bearing 
securities for the insured, and stands 
at all times to the credit of his policy. 
If it be a 20 Payment Life policy that 
we are talking about, then the pre¬ 
mium that is to be paid by the insured 
at age 35 is a higher premium than 
the ordinary life premium. He is 
only going to make 20 payments, and 
then his payments cease and his 
policy is paid up and the face of it is 
payable to his beneficiary at his 
death. 31 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


In that instance he must pay such 
a sum, divided into 20 annual pay¬ 
ments, which, if invested each year 
and compounded at 3 x /^°/o interest for 
32 years, or to the end of his expec¬ 
tancy, will make $1,000.00. If it be 
an endowment policy, then the pre¬ 
mium must be such a sum payable 
each year for the 20 years and invest¬ 
ed at 3%% compound interest that 
will make $1,000.00 at the end of the 
period and not at the end of the man’s 
expectancy. The amount of the load¬ 
ing that is added to these new pre¬ 
miums and taken for the expense ele¬ 
ment of the company is such an 
amount as the company may deter¬ 
mine that it desires to charge. In no 
instance is it very great. This is 
clearly proven by the fact that there 
is very little difference in the pre¬ 
mium rates of the different Legal Re¬ 
serve companies. 

The agent can easily prove the 
scientific correctness of the American 


82 


MORTALITY TABLES 

Experience Table. If you will turn 
to your table, you will see that at age 
35 the survivors out of the original 
100,000 of persons number 81,822, and 
that at that year there are 732 deaths 
expected. If these people have asso¬ 
ciated themselves together to insure 
one another for $1,000.00, the sum of 
$732,000 must be collected that year 
in order to pay the estate of each one 
of these 732 people $1,000.00. Next, 
it will be easily seen that to find the 
exact sum which each person would 
have to pay at the outset to establish 
this fund it is only necessary to di¬ 
vide the total amount by the number 
of contributors. Therefore, 732,000 
divided by 81,822 will show that each 
member must contribute $8.95. This 
is the cost without reference to inter¬ 
est and on the actual basis of compu¬ 
tation from year to year. The next 
year it would be larger and every suc¬ 
ceeding year would be increased by 
the expected death loss and the re- 
3 33 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


maining survivors contributing for 
the loss, but instead of paying an in¬ 
creased premium each year, Legal 
Reserve insurance provides level pre¬ 
miums providing for sufficient mor¬ 
tality reserve, and the law recognizes 
this as exact and provides that reserve 
must be set aside to meet these death 
losses and to meet every other promise 
that is made by the company in its 
policies. 

The amount necessary and ascer¬ 
tainable by the application of the 
American Experience Table at 3%% 
as provided by law is known as legal 
reserve, and this is the safeguard of 
the Legal Reserve life insurance com¬ 
panies. This legal reserve is re¬ 
quired by law to be invested in securi¬ 
ties which are specified by law, and 
must be approved by the Insurance 
Department under which the company 
is doing business and held to the credit 
of each individual policy. This Legal 
reserve will meet every promise that 
34 


MORTALITY TABLES 


is made in the policy issued to the in¬ 
sured. We know that if the entire 
American Experience Table of Mor¬ 
tality is reached by any Legal Re¬ 
serve company that there is reserve 
back of the policies on which the 
claims may accrue to take care of and 
pay every claim promptly whenever 
they may occur. These losses will 
occur sooner or later for every com¬ 
pany with risks on its books. If that 
company is fortunate enough to have 
a favorable mortality less than the 
American Experience Table, then it 
has made a savings in mortality— 
funds on which it can save interest 
earnings untiTsuch a time in the fu¬ 
ture when the funds will be needed to 
take care of claims which will be re¬ 
alized. 

A splendid illustration of mortality 
as expected is an illustration made 
some time ago by standing one thou¬ 
sand men in front of an army of one 
thousand soldiers, each soldier with 
35 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


rifles, nine of which were loaded with 
powder and lead. When the com¬ 
mand was given and the shots fired 
it was known that nine men in front 
of them would drop dead. Just so 
sure as death from loaded rifles is the 
expectancy of death in one thousand 
insured persons, and if the actual con¬ 
dition among one thousand prospects 
for insurance was that one thousand 
soldiers stood in front of them and 
nine of them had loaded rifles, every 
blessed one of the prospects would 
take insurance just as quickly as the 
agents could write the applications, 
and it now remains for the agent to 
impress upon his prospect and show 
him that contingency of his death is 
just as great as if the soldiers were 
standing in front of him, because 
there will be nine men out of the one 
thousand die the first year. Of course 
if your prospect is at an older age, 
then there will be more of them die 


36 


MORTALITY TABLES 


during that time. At age 50 there 
will be 12 out of the thousand. 

Therefore the Legal Reserve life 
insurance company being built upon 
scientific mortality tables which have 
proven to be good since 1858 and are 
therefore a little bit too high today on 
account of improved sanitary condi¬ 
tions and other things that have 
lengthened human life, and in view 
of the fact that insurance companies 
are required by law to base the cal¬ 
culation of their premiums upon this 
table and collect from the insured an 
amount sufficient to meet every obli¬ 
gation and every promise in the poli¬ 
cies issued by them, we can see that 
insurance is the most scientific busi¬ 
ness in the world and is seen to be ab¬ 
solutely the most solid of any financial 
institutions in existence today. 


37 





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.V 





Organization of Companies 



CHAPTER III 
Organization of Companies 

There are three forms of life insur¬ 
ance under the state laws of Illinois, 
and this is true in practically all the 
states of the Union, although some of 
them have only two. Let us for a few 
minutes look at the three forms of in¬ 
surance. 

First, we will take fraternal in¬ 
surance. In order to organize a Fra¬ 
ternal Society it is necessary, in the 
state of Illinois, to have 500 members 
who have each made application and 
paid $2.00 each. This makes $1,000.- 
00. Then with the proper approval 
of the society’s by-laws, which must 
include a lodge system, the company 
is authorized to do business, and can 
then issue certificates to members. 
These certificates usually certify that 
the person is a member of the order 
41 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


and entitled to participate therein, 
not to exceed a certain amount, say 
$1,000.00. The amount ascertained 
from one periodical assessment which 
is usually made monthly is the basis 
on which the certificate is to be set¬ 
tled. That is, they promise to pay not 
to exceed $1,000.00 should that 
amount be realized on a monthly as¬ 
sessment. If the monthly assessment 
would be less than enough to pay all 
existing death claims, then the pro¬ 
portionate part is all the certificate 
holder can recover. The fraternal 
societies therefore do not promise to 
pay a sum certain, but they make it 
depend upon extra assessment, if it 
falls short of the amount that would 
be realized from one assessment. 

Fraternal societies are not required 
in any instance to maintain reserve; 
not required to invest any of their 
funds in any class of securities, nor 
are they required to account to their 
policyholders for any sums paid ex- 
42 


ORGANIZATION OF COMPANIES 

cept at death. Some of them, it may 
be, in one way or another, acquire and 
maintain what is known as reserve 
funds. These are carried along from 
time to time during the life of the so¬ 
ciety provided that some person who 
is elected treasurer or secretary or 
placed in charge of this fund does not 
walk away with it and leave the so¬ 
ciety without any reserve fund. The 
point that I want to make is, that 
reserve funds in fraternal societies 
will never be enough to amount to 
anything, because there are no restric¬ 
tions upon these societies to protect 
the money that may be from time to 
time paid in and accumulated. The 
members pay at a rate that will not 
from time to time pay the death 
claims of the society upon any scien¬ 
tific basis. Hence the life of a frater¬ 
nal society is necessarily limited to 
that time at which the society arrives 
at a point when the number of new 
members that it gets in is insufficient 
43 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


to off-set the death rate, and then the 
death rate begins to go up. 

All members who are insurable and 
who can obtain insurance, where it is 
safe, drop out and leave the old mem¬ 
bers and the members who are im¬ 
paired risks in the society, and the 
death rates go up, and hence men who 
are up in age and who are impaired 
risks and cannot get insurance in 
other places find themselves carrying 
insurance on which the rates have 
been raised until it is prohibitive. Fra¬ 
ternal insurance has never stood the 
test of time in any form that it has 
been issued. It has never withstood 
the test of competition. In fact, be¬ 
ing based upon an entirely false bot¬ 
tom, it has never been able to exist 
beyond a very short period. Nor can 
it ever do so until the members pay 
enough premiums so that the society 
can pay back to the insured $1,000.00 
at the end of his expectancy. 

The human life on an average has 
44 


ORGANIZATION OF COMPANIES 


a certain number of years allotted to 
each individual. The good book tells 
us, “The days of our years are three 
score years and ten, and if by reason 
of strength they be four score years, 
yet is there strength, labor, and sor¬ 
row, for it is soon cut off and we fly 
away.” This allotment of time to an 
individual was made a long long time 
ago, and yet it is true today that the 
average years upon which the human 
life is based is 70 years, or three score 
years and ten, and the American Ex¬ 
perience Table recognizes that as al¬ 
most the correct basis. Therefore any 
institution which attempts to cover a 
hazard on human life and gets its 
money from individuals to pay the 
amount promised by getting a smaller 
amount than that sum which invested 
at a reasonable rate of interest, will 
make the sum promised, can only 
know failure, because an insurance 
company can no more pay $1.00 with 
50c than can any other kind of an in- 
45 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 

stitution. Therefore fraternal socie¬ 
ties can never be permanent. They 
can never exist very long because they 
are not on a scientific basis. Taking 
insurance in a fraternal society is like 
a man renting a farm. He only has 
the use of it as long as it is good and 
as long as he can keep it. It is not 
like the Old Line Legal Reserve pol¬ 
icy on which he acquires his interest 
as he makes his payments and which 
is insured to him by law, but the fra¬ 
ternal certificate is merely a make¬ 
shift for the time being. 

The other kind of insurance is 
Assessment insurance, sometimes 
known as stipulated premium. In or¬ 
der to organize one of these compan¬ 
ies it is necessary also that the or¬ 
ganizers have 500 members who have 
paid $2.00 each or have on hands 
$1,000.00. Neither the fraternal so¬ 
ciety nor the assessment company has 
any stock, nor can they have under 
the law. And notwithstanding the fact 
46 


ORGANIZATION OF COMPANIES 


that there is usually spent more than 
$1,000.00 to get the 500 members who 
have paid in $2.00 apiece before the 
company starts, it is recognized by 
law as a concern with authority to 
issue policies of insurance, supposed 
to protect families and wives and 
children against the death of the in¬ 
sured. 

Every policy issued by concerns of 
this kind must have in it an assess¬ 
ment clause providing that if at any 
time a necessity arises, the assess¬ 
ments can be increased or extra as¬ 
sessments made so as to meet the re¬ 
quirements and necessities that the 
company may undergo. Pew of these 
concerns have ever grown to any pro¬ 
portion. The Bankers Life of Des 
Moines grew to be a large institution. 
The largest of its kind that has ever 
been known. It was on this basis that 
it was built up, and after it had built 
itself up to have $600,000,000.00 of 
business, it found that it was little 
47 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


better off than the day when it started. 
It consequently went upon the old line 
basis—took over and changed much of 
its insurance and will leave the bal¬ 
ance of it in a class by themselves, the 
same as they were before they were 
taken over. 

The premiums charged by this class 
of companies is a little more than fra¬ 
ternal societies; quite a little less than 
Legal Reserve companies. No matter 
how much money they collect nor how 
much they accumulate, the law does 
not require them to invest it in any 
class of securities, nor to invest it at 
all, nor account for any of it to the 
policyholders in any way whatever. 
The only promise is to pay death 
claims when they occur. The only 
protection, if it may be called protec¬ 
tion, that the law gives to policyhold¬ 
ers in an assessment association is the 
requirement that the company must 
have on hands one periodical payment 
on all policyholders of the company. 

48 


ORGANIZATION OF COMPANIES 


That is, if a member pays $1.00 
monthly they must have $1.00 for him. 
If another member pays $6.00 semi¬ 
annually, they must have $6.00 for 
him and $3.00 for the man who pays 
$3.00 quarterly, and these payments 
added together is the magnificent sum 
that these companies must have on 
hands with which to pay its death loss, 
and if at any time they run below this 
amount they have six months in which 
to make it up. They usually have 
very little on hands, and the Superin¬ 
tendent of Insurance of Illinois has 
for years recommended to the Legis¬ 
lature that the assessment laws per¬ 
mitting associations of this kind be 
repealed, and that no more be al¬ 
lowed to do business; that this class 
of insurance affords poor protection 
for policyholders; that it is not on a 
scientific basis; that it should not be 
allowed to exist. 

Contrast with these two kinds of in¬ 
surance the Old Line Legal Reserve 
4 49 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


Company and its insurance. When 
it is desired to organize an Old Line 
Legal Reserve Stock Company, it is 
necessary to have at least nine or¬ 
ganizers. The capital stock cannot 
be less than $100,000, and it must be 
all fully subscribed and paid in in 
cash, and the $100,000 must be invest¬ 
ed in such securities as the law speci¬ 
fies and which are approved by the 
Superintendent of Insurance and de¬ 
posited with the Insurance Superin¬ 
tendent at the State Capitol. The se¬ 
curities in which Old Line Legal Re¬ 
serve companies, organized under the 
laws of Illinois, can invest are govern¬ 
ment, state and municipal bonds, first 
mortgages on real estate, certain 
stocks and bonds and first mortgage 
bonds. The companies are not per¬ 
mitted to invest in industrial securi¬ 
ties. 

The funds of the Peoria Life In¬ 
surance Company are all invested in 
farm mortgages. That is, the com- 
50 


ORGANIZATION OF COMPANIES 

pany has no investments except in 
farm mortgages and policy loans, 
and no investments are made in any 
class of securities except farm mort¬ 
gages, and our deposit of $100,000.00 
with the Superintendent of Insurance 
of Illinois is all in farm mortgages. 
The $100,000.00 that is required to be 
deposited with the Insurance Super¬ 
intendent is a requirement upon each 
and every Legal Reserve company. 
No matter how large or how small 
the company is, it must have $100,000 
deposited with its home state before 
it can get a certificate of authorhy to 
do business. The Metropolitan Life 
Insurance Company, the largest in¬ 
surance company in the world, is re¬ 
quired to have its $100,000, and the 
company just starting today is re¬ 
quired to have its $100,000. So, from 
this standpoint, each and every com¬ 
pany stands exactly the same, having 
$100,000 deposited with the State In¬ 
surance Superintendent in its home 
51 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


state for the protection of its policy¬ 
holders. In addition to this $100,000 
each and every company must accum¬ 
ulate the reserve required by law. 
That reserve is a sum of money re¬ 
quired to be collected and invested un¬ 
der the American Experience Table 
at 3 y 2 % interest, and is sufficient to 
pay every promise made in the in¬ 
sured’s policy at the time that it is 
promised to him. 

That is, if it is an Ordinary Life 
policy, the reserve paid in to the com¬ 
pany and compounded until his ex¬ 
pectancy, will make the amount suffi¬ 
cient to pay every promise in that 
policy. If it be a 20 Payment Life 
policy, the same thing will be true at 
the end of his expectancy. There¬ 
fore, there can be no question about 
the stability and safety of an Old Line 
Legal Reserve Company. 

It is an impossibility for an Old 
Line company to fail, and the reasons 
why they cannot fail are very appar- 
52 


ORGANIZATION OF COMPANIES 


ent from what I have already said. 
That is, that the reserve paid in by 
the policyholder based upon the law 
of average as correctly set forth in the 
American Experience Table will pay 
every promise that the company 
makes to the policyholder at the time 
they promise to pay it, and in addi¬ 
tion to that reserve, there is still the 
capital stock that is deposited with 
the state and all the surplus of the 
company that is back of the policy for 
the protection of each policyholder in 
addition to all reserve. Therefore, if 
the company used up all of its sur¬ 
plus, wdiich is all that it could use, the 
policyholder would be absolute^ pro¬ 
tected by the reserve which belongs 
to them, and the stockholders will 
still receive the par value of their 
stock. 

All companies have the same re¬ 
quirements as to reserve. In this re¬ 
gard each company puts up just the 
same amount at the same age on the 

53 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 

same kind of policy for the protection 
of its policyholders. That is, on the 
Ordinary Life policy at age 35, the 
reserve that is put up is based on the 
American Experience Table at 3y 2 %. 
Some companies use 3% reserve basis 
instead of 3%%. The reserve that is 
put up by the Peoria Life Insurance 
Company is identically the same re¬ 
serve (except for the slight difference 
in methods of calculation) as that put 
up to accumulate by the New York 
Life, by the Metropolitan, by the 
North Western or by any other com¬ 
pany, whether it be large or small. 
Then we see that the Old Line Legal 
Reserve companies are upon the same 
footing, both as to the question of de¬ 
posit with the state and with the re¬ 
serve accumulations required by law 
for the protection of its policyholders. 
As far as protection of policyholders 
is concerned, the young company is 
as safe as the old, and all are by law 
made absolutely safe. They are very 
54 


ORGANIZATION OF COMPANIES 

similar to the National Banks of the 
United States and the requirements 
necessary for them to issue national 
bank notes. We know very well that 
if a man finds himself fortunate 
enough to possess a $5.00 bank note 
he does not inquire what bank it is 
on, but knows that it is good and that 
anyone will take it. In fact, none of 
us know by what bank the money that 
we may have is issued. We take it 
entirely satisfied, knowing that the 
government has thrown around what¬ 
ever bank issues national bank notes 
certain requirements before they are 
issued which makes that money abso¬ 
lutely safe. The bank may go out of 
business, but the certificate is just as 
good and safe as ever. The same thing 
is absolutely true in Old Line Legal 
Reserve insurance today. Before a 
company can issue a policy, the form 
must be submitted to the Insurance 
Superintendent and approved by hirn. 
He sees that the company has been or- 
55 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


ganized and authorized to do business 
under the requirements of the law by 
having put up its $100,000 with him, 
and in addition to that, sees that it 
accumulates and invests out of the 
premium the amount of legal reserve 
required by law for the protection of 
each policy and the payment of every 
promise made therein. In other 
words, there has been set back of that 
policy the amount of money required 
to make it good, just the same as back 
of each and every bank note. 

Therefore, we see that Old Line 
Legal Reserve insurance policies fur¬ 
nish to the insured absolute protec¬ 
tion at all times by giving him policies 
that have value—the value of which 
increases with each and every year’s 
payment thereon. Every Old Line 
policyholder has a legal guarantee is¬ 
sued by a company that cannot in any 
possible way fail, and in which he can¬ 
not lose one single dollar of his 
money. We see that this class of in- 
56 


ORGANIZATION OF COMPANIES 


surance is absolutely safe protection 
for the homes and the individuals of 
the home in this country. 

Contrasted with that is fraternal 
insurance and assessment insurance 
which is not backed by anything that 
is safe and stable, that can only exist 
as long as the lodge members con¬ 
tinue to come in faster than the mem¬ 
bers die, and that when the crisis 
comes and the society or the assess¬ 
ment company has gone on the rocks, 
that there is nothing at all left for 
the policyholders. Their policies 
have no value except as death claims, 
and then only to the extent of the abil¬ 
ity of the society to pay. 


57 









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State Supervision 
















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CHAPTER IY 


State Supervision 

Soon after the first life insurance 
company was organized in the United 
States on a Legal Reserve basis, it 
became apparent that this was a de¬ 
partment of business in this country 
that would need supervision, because 
it was a business that dealt with in¬ 
dividuals in the protection of their 
lives and their homes. So, in 1855 the 
first supervision of life insurance 
companies began in Massachusetts. 
Today every state in the United 
States supervises its insurance com¬ 
panies, and that supervision is more 
strict in many of them than the gov¬ 
ernment supervision of the state or 
national banks. Today we know in 
Illinois that every company organized 
under its laws and every company do¬ 
ing business in the state must meet 
61 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


with certain requirements of our law 
and certain requirements of the In¬ 
surance Superintendent. 

One of the requirements of our 
home state companies is that every 30 
days we must report to the Insurance 
Superintendent all of our transac¬ 
tions relative to policies of insurance; 
we must give the number, age, amount 
and premium of every policy issued. 
We must do likewise with every policy 
lapsed or terminated. The same with 
every change, and so it is that the In¬ 
surance Superintendent in his office 
at the state capitol knows as much 
about each and every individual pol¬ 
icy that the company has on its books 
as the company itself knows. The In¬ 
surance Superintendent is required 
by law to make examinations, at such 
time as he may deem advisable, of 
the affairs of the company at its home 
office, and he has power to inspect and 
investigate and supervise all the af¬ 
fairs and transactions of the com¬ 
pany. 


62 


STATE SUPERVISION 

The Peoria Life, in its investments 
in farm mortgages, is supervised by 
the Insurance Department to the ex¬ 
tent that we must furnish to the state 
a legal description of each and every 
piece of property on which a loan is 
made; the amount of the loan; the 
amount of our appraisement; the 
value that we have placed upon the 
improvements; the rate of interest, 
etc., and an inspection is made from 
the Insurance Department of the 
security on which our loans are made 
and should any of them fall below the 
legal requirements, then we would be 
immediately notified and that loan 
would have to be taken up. The law 
requires that no loan can be made up¬ 
on real estate in any amount which 
is more than 50% of the value of the 
property. 

The law practically writes the poli¬ 
cies for the insurance companies to¬ 
day. In Illinois in 1907 there was 
passed a law that was known as the 

63 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


General Provisions Law. This law 
has been passed by most of the states 
of the United States since that time, 
and has been copied after the Illinois 
law. This law sets forth certain pro¬ 
visions that every policy must have 
before it can be issued by an Old Line 
insurance company. The law also sets 
forth provisions which a company 
cannot put in the policy issued by it, 
and when a policy is drawn up con¬ 
forming to this general provisions 
law, the law has then practically writ¬ 
ten the policy for the insurance com¬ 
pany. The provisions of this law are 
as follows: 

Each policy must have— 

A title correctly describing it printed 
on the back and on the front. 

Exact premium must be stated in the 
policy. 

Premiums must be based upon Amer¬ 
ican Experience Table with 
interest. 

Grace of one month in payment of 
premium. 


64 


STATE SUPERVISION 


Copy of application attached which, 
with policy, constitute the entire 
contract. 

If age has been mis-stated, provision 
for adjustment. 

If Participating—how dividends pay¬ 
able. 

After three premiums are paid poli¬ 
cies must have: 

Cash Value; 

Paid-up Insurance; 

Loan Value; 

Extended Insurance. 

Provisions for reinstatement. 

Payment of death claims must be 
made upon receipt of proofs and 
not later than two months. 

Table showing instalment privilege. 

No policy shall contain provision: 

Limiting time to bring suit to 
less than 3 years. 

Dating it back longer than 6 
months. 

No provision for payment of any 
sum less than the face. 

No provision for forfeiture for 
failure to repay loan. 

Therefore, we see that when the re¬ 
quirements of the law are met in the 
65 


5 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


issuance of policies by the insurance 
company, these policies having been 
submitted and approved before issu¬ 
ance, and in the strict supervision of 
the Insurance Superintendent and the 
strict requirements of the law in the 
organization and the carrying on of 
the company, that there is no invest¬ 
ment that any man can make that is 
safer than the investment in an Old 
Line Legal Eeserve insurance policy. 


66 



Life Insurance as a 
Profession 


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CHAPTER V 

Life Insurance As a Profession 

Since the institution of life insur¬ 
ance is the greatest and most solid 
financial institution in the world, and 
inasmuch as it is the one institution 
that does more for the human race 
than any other single institution, the 
profession of solicitor or agent for a 
life insurance company is one of 
which any man should be proud. No 
institution has done more good for the 
country than has life insurance. By 
demonstrating the correctness of the 
tables of mortality, it has shown that 
it is to the individuaPs benefit that he 
live a correct and proper life. The 
insurance companies in this country 
have done more for the improvement 
of hygienic and general conditions af¬ 
fecting the health of the people than 
any other institution. It has reduced 
the percentage of pauperism through 
69 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


drink by demonstrating that the 
liquor habit is a disease, and declines 
to accept risks who are addicted to 
the habitual use of alcoholic liquors. 
This has provided for thousands and 
thousands of people who, without the 
estates in life insurance policies left 
them, would have been charges upon 
the community. 

There is no field more inviting to 
the man who can sell than is the field 
of life insurance. It has more ad¬ 
vantages and opportunities combined 
than any other line of human en¬ 
deavor. The life insurance agent 
knows that every time he has placed 
a policy he has protected a home or 
a business, and if the individual car¬ 
ries out his part of the contract he 
knows that he has done infinite good 
to humanity. His position is a per¬ 
manent one and the longer he stays in 
it the more he accumulates and the 
more he builds for himself. The life 
insurance agent who takes up the 
70 


A PROFESSION 


work properly thereby goes into part¬ 
nership with the company. He and 
the company are working together in 
building up the business, he repre¬ 
senting the company in his commu¬ 
nity, and in his territory is building 
for himself, and each and every pol¬ 
icy placed on the books by him is a 
permanent asset going into his indi¬ 
vidual estate and bringing him re¬ 
turns. 

The compensation earned by the 
life insurance agent today is as good 
as in any profession in which he could 
engage, and better than many of them. 
It is not necessary that he carry a 
stock of goods and have money invest¬ 
ed and be in debt for large sums of 
money on which he takes chances of 
the seasons being right or of trade be¬ 
ing good, for he has no money invest¬ 
ed. He is using his entire time against 
the estate that he is building up, and 
everything that he does is a profitable 
transaction to him. 


71 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


Hence we see the general agents in 
all communities of our country stand¬ 
ing in the front ranks of the business 
men; among bankers and professional 
men with estates to their credit and 
the property in their name compares 
very favorably with any other kind 
of profession. It is stated that in 
New York only 30% of the lawyers 
are making a decent living, and 40% 
are struggling for existence. Practi¬ 
cally the same ratio of failures exist 
in many other professions and in all 
the other cities. The chances of earn¬ 
ing much money in any one of the 
other crowded professions are unfav¬ 
orable for the majority of young men. 

Let me say, however, that the life 
insurance business is not an easy busi¬ 
ness. It is not a profession in which 
you can get your rate book and sit 
in the office chair and pile up income. 
In fact, I know of no profession or 
occupation that any one can enter into 
in which he can make a living with- 
72 


A PROFESSION 

out work. If there be such a profes¬ 
sion or such a calling, it is not fit for 
one to be engaged in, and success in 
life insurance requires time and work 
just the same as it does in all other 
lines of human endeavor. It requires 
time and work to procure prospects ; 
time and work to interview them; 
time and work to procure their appli¬ 
cations; to have them examined; to 
deliver the policies and collect the pre¬ 
miums. And, above all this, it re¬ 
quires time and work to take care of 
your policyholders after you have 
their policies placed. The successful 
life insurance agent does not stop with 
the mere placing of his policy and the 
collection of his first premium, but he 
builds himself into the community so 
strongly that the persons taking in¬ 
surance in that community go to him 
for advice and therefore become his 
clients in the business. People will 
not go to the agent for insurance. Tak¬ 
ing insurance is just like taking re- 
73 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


ligion—it must be forced upon the 
person; he must be made to see the 
necessity of protection for his family; 
protection for his business, or protec¬ 
tion for himself during his old age. 
It takes time and work for the agent 
to make his canvass and show to the 
prospect the necessity for it and 
create in his mind the desire for it. 

The fundamental principle of life 
insurance is protection of the family, 
and that agent is strongest who makes 
his canvass primarily upon protection. 
He shows to the husband that he needs 
protection for his estate—for his 
wife and children; shows to the busi¬ 
ness man that he needs protection to 
cover obligations of his business; 
shows to the farmer that he needs pro¬ 
tection to cover his obligations and 
protection for his family, and nine 
times out of ten every policy that is 
placed purely on the argument of pro¬ 
tection and the proper canvass is made, 
and where the man is made to know 


74 


A PROFESSION 


and feel the necessity of insurance, 
stays upon the books until its matur¬ 
ity. 

There has never been anything in¬ 
vented that will take the place of 
work with a good insurance agent, no 
more than it will in any other kind 
of profession. Work will raise you 
above all the personalities in life. It 
will clear temptation from your mind 
and it will teach you courage, pa¬ 
tience and self-reliance; it will con¬ 
centrate all your mental powers upon 
your work done, and will make you 
succeed. Hence the company wants 
to know in each and every instance, 
not whether you are a genius or na¬ 
tural born solicitor, but are you a 
worker ? If a man is a worker, then 
he must have definite opportunities 
in life. He must work with directed 
energy toward something, and the 
only way that he can make his work 
easy is to work continuously. Work 
continuously with an end in view and 
75 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


your accomplishments and your suc¬ 
cess will be all of the variation that 
you need. We have all found that it 
is work that counts, and work that 
continues to keep the human mind in 
its correct condition. It is work that 
keeps a body in good physical condi¬ 
tion, and without work and without 
directed energy the human mind will 
not remain normal very long. 

We all remember the story of Gen¬ 
eral U. S. Grant, one of the strong¬ 
est and greatest men in the United 
States, both physically and mentally, 
who set about to write his memoirs, 
and during all the time when he was 
working hard to complete his task so 
as to leave his wife and family some¬ 
thing that might bring them a liv¬ 
ing (and by the way, this was all in 
the way of an estate that he did leave), 
he kept up and kept in good condi¬ 
tion, but three days after he laid down 
his pen and announced that he was 
done with his task, death had claimed 
76 


A PROFESSION 


him because his physical and mental 
condition had no further object in 
view and there was no further work 
for him to do—no stimulus to keep 
mind and body alive. 

Life Insurance as a profession re¬ 
quires a very high degree of effi¬ 
ciency and determination. No man 
ever failed to succeed through any 
fault of his profession. If he failed 
it was through his own fault. It is 
necessary that a man, in order to suc¬ 
ceed, work systematically. He must 
first learn human nature, and when 
he knows his profession he must learn 
to become thoroughly imbued with the 
business in which he is engaged. He 
must believe in it—believe that insur¬ 
ance is the only profession there is 
on earth. The same is true of each 
and every kind of business. He must 
believe in the particular company for 
which he is working and believe that 
that one company is the correct com¬ 
pany for him to represent, and the 
77 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


only company and the best company 
there is, and then he must have su¬ 
preme confidence in himself; must be¬ 
lieve in himself to the extent that he 
knows and must know that he can 
and will succeed. When a man has 
these qualifications and has made 
these determinations he can go forth 
in his community and immediately 
draw about him a host of friends that 
builds for him a big general agency. 
No general agency can ever be built 
upon trickery—upon any scheme of 
any kind that deviates from the true 
facts exactly as they will appear in 
twenty years hence; but the man who 
goes forth with his rate book, believ¬ 
ing in his profession, believing in his 
company and loyal to himself and to 
his company, will succeed, and will 
be proud of himself when he has built 
up an agency that brings him the re¬ 
muneration that he deserves. 


78 


Territory 




CHAPTER VI 
Territory 

I think it must have been away 
back in the time of pre-historic man 
that some one invented the saying, 
“The grass on the other side of the 
fence always appears the greenest”. 
Since that time to the insurance agent 
this saying has had very much the 
same effect as the eating of the apple 
in the garden of Eden had on the hu¬ 
man race. To the insurance agent 
who wants an excuse, the territory in 
which he is, always furnished him an 
interesting topic of discussion. There 
never is quite as good territory in his 
community as there is over in 
Brown’s territory, who is getting good 
business and who is ahead of him. 
The residents in his community are 
always those men who are not favor¬ 
able to insurance. In fact, they do 
not want life insurance. 


81 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


You men who have been on the fir¬ 
ing line for a few years know what 
this kind of excuse means. It means 
that the man who makes it is not 
working properly or is not working at 
all, one of the two things. The terri¬ 
tory is 95% man and 5% territory, 
and the man who applies himself in 
a poor territory will get more busi¬ 
ness than the man who loafs three- 
fourths of his time in the best commu¬ 
nity in the country. We have all seen 
good men going to poor territory and 
producing a wonderfully big volume 
of business. We have seen this same 
man go right on into good territory 
and produce a lot of business, all of 
which goes to show that the man who 
applies himself in the right kind of a 
way produces results anywhere. 

I remember at one time one of our 
men, who is now one of the best men 
that we have, went into one of the 
poorest counties in Illinois and put 
on over $200,000 of business in one 
82 


TERRITORY 


year. This man went in there against 
the advice of everybody to whom he 
had talked. He just simply went into 
the territory in which the residents 
were poor and not able to buy big pol¬ 
icies. He did not try to sell them big 
policies; he sold them the kind of poli¬ 
cies that they could take. In other 
words, he adjusted himself to the ter¬ 
ritory in which he was working, and 
then worked for the interest of his pol¬ 
icyholders and got results, and today 
that man can go into that same terri¬ 
tory and produce splendid results, 
and he does go back every once in a 
while and comes out with $10,000 to 
$20,000 of business each week. Oh 
for more men with average sense and 
good judgment! 

One time not very many years ago 
we had an agent who changed his lo¬ 
cation from one of the best communi¬ 
ties in the state of Illinois to what 
he thought was a greener and more 
succulent field, stating when he did so 
83 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 

that he had worked out that commu¬ 
nity and that there was no further 
business for him to get. Another 
agent moved into his old territory 
just about the same time. Over the 
period of one year this new man who 
moved in there produced $214,000 of 
good business all paid for. Was it 
the man or the territory? Every 
time you think about your territory 
being poor and you being handi¬ 
capped by being in a community that 
is not as good as the other fellow’s, 
then just go off by yourself for about 
half an hour and ask yourself what 
is the matter; ask yourself what it is 
that is making you fall down, be¬ 
cause you are falling down when you 
go to making those kind of excuses. 
True, one fellow is not as good as 
some others—one community is not 
as good for the big volume of busi¬ 
ness as some other territory. In some 
territories you cannot sell as big poli¬ 
cies as you can in others, but there 
84 


TERRITORY 


is no man who has territory that 
is confined entirely to a poor class 
of business, and remember the 
old saying, that territory is 95% 
man and 5% territory. That is 
the last analysis all the time, and then 
it is up to the man who begins to make 
excuses to find out what it is that is 
keeping him from getting the busi¬ 
ness. 


85 












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Self Confidence 




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CHAPTER VII 
Self Confidence 

Salesmanship in life insurance is 
no different than salesmanship in any 
other line except that it is of a higher 
grade. The life insurance salesman 
who goes forth and canvasses his pros¬ 
pects does not take with him some 
small article that can be tied up in a 
package and delivered to the buyer. 
He sells contracts which are only writ¬ 
ten instruments which carry with 
them the future estate of the buyer. 
Therefore the salesman of insurance 
must develop in himself a degree of 
efficiency higher and broader and bet¬ 
ter than that of the ordinary sales¬ 
man. In dealing with all characters 
of men, he must of necessity be a good 
judge of human nature, because the 
making of his sales is simply the mas¬ 
tering of the mind with which he is 
89 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


dealing in his canvass. The salesman 
who goes forward with his rate book 
in a half-hearted manner will do much 
better to stay at home and never take 
up the profession of life insurance. 
I would say that the first thing that 
the insurance salesman should realize 
to the full extent is that in order to 
be successful in his profession, he 
must have confidence in that profes¬ 
sion. He must believe that the busi¬ 
ness in which he is engaged is the very 
best business for him to be in. He 
must realize and understand what the 
profession of insurance means to him 
as well as the community with which 
he is dealing. He must realize and 
know that every sale he makes is do¬ 
ing good in the community and is 
helping make it better. 

In other words, he must realize and 
believe that the profession in which 
he is engaged is one that is on a par 
with any of the very best professions 
of men. Then he must have confi- 


90 


SELF-CONFIDENCE 

dence in his company; he must be¬ 
lieve that the company for which he 
is working is the right company for 
which he ought to work; that it is one 
that deals honestly and justly with its 
policyholders and with the public and 
one that does not resort in any of its 
methods to trickery or deception, and 
one that puts honest efforts toward the 
betterment of its policyholders at all 
times. No man can afford to work 
for any life insurance company that 
uses wrong methods in the building 
up of its business, because when all is 
said and done, the general agent is 
merely building a miniature company 
of his own, and all these agencies con¬ 
stitute the parent company, and if 
there is not a solid foundation under¬ 
lying the whole structure, its reputa¬ 
tion will be bad, just like the reputa¬ 
tion of a great building would be if 
the foundation had not been put in 
properly. Therefore the company’s 
policies is one of the main features for 
91 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


the agent to satisfy himself upon be¬ 
fore he begins work for the company 
with which he has decided to go. 

I might say that the next proposi¬ 
tion for him would be to look to see 
whether the management of the com¬ 
pany was right and proper—whether 
that company invested its funds in 
such securities as would help him in 
getting business, and whether those 
investments brought the proper re¬ 
turns in the way of interest for policy¬ 
holders. And this is particularly true 
if he is selling participating business 
because one of the sources of divi¬ 
dends to the policyholders is the in¬ 
terest earnings of his company. 

After he has confidence in his pro¬ 
fession, and after he has assured him¬ 
self of his confidence in his company 
and in his company’s policies, the next 
requisite of a successful agent is his 
own self confidence. Self confidence 
is one of the general requisites of suc¬ 
cess in any man who goes forth to 
92 


SELF-CONFIDENCE 


sell to the public. Many a sale is lost 
before the agent has taken hold of the 
door knob on the outside of the door 
because he did not have the confidence 
in himself before he began the inter¬ 
view. Our business is not to go ahead 
of other people, but to go ahead of 
ourselves—to break our own record 
—to outstrip our yesterdays with to¬ 
days—to do our work with more 
force and finer finish than ever. This 
is the true idea—to get ahead of our¬ 
selves. 

Without self confidence no agent' 
can be successful. Without faith and 
self confidence nothing permanent has 
ever been built. Run back over the 
pages of history for a few illustra¬ 
tions and you will soon determine 
what faith and self confidence have 
done in the building up of the world 
and in the transaction of all great 
businesses. We are told that when 
the Saviour was on earth He went 
forth healing the sick and blind, and 
93 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 

that at one time when a great crowd 
was assembled about Him a young 
man was brought to Him to be healed 
of an ailment. The crowd was so 
great that they could not approach 
near to the Saviour with the young 
man on the litter. So great was his 
faith that he was let down from the 
top of the building at the very side 
of the Saviour, and seeing his earnest¬ 
ness the Saviour said to him, “Thy 
faith hath made thee whole”. 
The faith and confidence that this 
man had, not only in himself, but in 
the Saviour, was what caused him to 
be healed of his ailment. Time and 
again we have seen instances of self 
confidence displayed which have 
caused the individual to overcome dif¬ 
ficulties which seemed almost insur¬ 
mountable. This has been displayed 
in great generals in wars from time 
immemorial. Alexander conquered 
the world through self confidence, and 
not in his over-powering army that 
94 


SELF-CONFIDENCE 

he had, because his forces did not 
equal those of the enemy. Through 
all of the battles which Napoleon 
fought there was no time in which his 
army was greater than that of the 
enemy, but usually a great many times 
smaller. 

We need go no farther than our 
own selves to determine the value of 
self confidence. Just think of your 
own self for a little while and you will 
remember some trait of your own that 
you have had to fight in order to give 
you confidence in yourself to accomp¬ 
lish something. Our own habits 
very often have a very great bearing 
upon our confidence in ourselves. For 
instance, all of us have seen that kind 
of a person who must make a saving 
in every transaction, and who must 
mention it at the time. That is not 
economy. The insurance agent who 
goes about a community and hangs 
around the cheapest restaurants for 
his meals in every town that he goes 
95 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 

into is thereby establishing in himself 
a habit that takes away his self con¬ 
fidence. I do not mean to say that an 
agent should not be economical, but I 
am merely citing this as an incident 
to show that a person can get into a 
fixed habit that has an effect upon his 
mind which takes away his self confi¬ 
dence. To spend money in a grudging 
manner is another thing that takes 
away self confidence. A man may not 
have in his pocket more than enough 
money with which to pay his cab fare 
when he alights at the hotel, but he 
can spend that money which he has 
to spend just as freely as though he 
had plenty and thereby do himself 
some good. One of the greatest men 
that I have ever known, in building 
up a business and accumulating a for¬ 
tune when he began on the course that 
he had mapped out for himself, bor¬ 
rowed $5.00 with which to entertain 
the first man to whom he made a sale 
of real estate, and he did not have a 
96 


SELF-CONFIDENCE 


dollar in the world except the $5.00 
that he had borrowed. The man whom 
he entertained was a millionaire, and 
he entertained him as though he were 
his equal financially. He made the 
sale to him and this was the founda¬ 
tion of his large estate. 

The point that I want to make is 
that everything you attempt to do 
should be attempted with confidence 
that you are going to succeed and with 
earnestness that yon are right. Don’t 
walk up to the task that you expect 
to do hesitating and doubting whether 
or not you will succeed, but go at it 
with all the faith and confidence that 
you are capable of mustering, and 
that you are going to do just what 
you have set about to do. Why, it is 
self confidence and faith on which the 
entire world is built. Nothing has 
ever been done without self confi¬ 
dence. There is no organization but 
what has for its foundation confi¬ 
dence and faith. None have ever suc- 
97 


7 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


ceeded without it. There is no church 
that has lived for any time or that has 
ever amounted to anything that was 
not founded upon sincerity, faith and 
confidence. 

Every man who has the proper kind 
of self confidence in the insurance 
business will be sincere. Your sole ob¬ 
ject in the canvass for insurance is to 
arouse in your prospect a desire for 
the^policy you are trying to sell him. 
The insurance salesman deals large¬ 
ly with imagination. You must have 
your prospect imagine what you have 
to sell and realize the true worth of 
the policy that you are presenting to 
him, and if you restrict yourself to 
the very one object of creating in his 
mind a desire for that policy, you will 
accomplish it. When an agent has 
once created in the mind of his pros¬ 
pect the desire for the article which 
he is selling, the greater part of his 
work is done. Have in mind that just 
as soon as your prospect has the 
98 


SELF-CONFIDENCE 


proper confidence in you and when 
you have created in him a desire for 
what you have to sell, then he will al¬ 
low you to make up his mind, and 
when you have him to that point with 
the right kind of tact you can lead 
him to the signature upon the dotted 
line. 

The point that 1 want to bring 
home to every agent is that he must 
first be in love with his work, and as 
soon as he is in love with his work he 
will begin to progress and succeed; 
that he must have confidence in his 
company and in the policies that he 
has to sell, and then he must have 
confidence in himself, and when you 
have equipped yourself with these 
accomplishments, or rather when you 
have developed the natural talents 
which the Creator gave you, then go 
out and make a success in your busi¬ 
ness, and don’t be side-tracked by 
mere excuses. The agent will not find 
in the course of a year a single pros- 
99 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 

pect who is ready to take insurance. 
They always have excuses and are 
never ready. Last year alone there 
was sold in the United States over 
three billions of insurance, and not a 
dollar of it to people who were ready 
or willing to buy. In other words, 
the insurance agents of Old Line 
Companies created last year over 
three billions of dollars of estates and 
made future citizens of the United 
States that much wealthier. 


100 


The Agent’s Attitude in 
the Canvass 


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1 








CHAPTER VIII 


The Agent's Attitude in the Can¬ 
vass 

There is no more interesting study 
than that of the different agents in 
making their canvasses. One agent 
starts in with his approach in one 
way, and another in another way. I 
heard of an agent not long ago who 
started to canvass a man to whom he 
actually expected to sell a policy by 
saying to him, “Let me sell you a 
policy”. Another one that I heard 
of started in by saying, “You don’t 
need any insurance do you?” Now, 
the agent that starts in with this kind 
of an attitude would get a long ways 
with an obstinate prospect, wouldn’t 
he? Every man with salesmanship 
ability must realize that he must use 
some tact and ingenuity in making 
his canvass. We do not mean that 


103 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


he must make any spectacular ap¬ 
proach, but that he must begin the 
canvass in a way that will help him 
along or else he is making it very hard 
for himself. There are so many 
agents who, in selling insurance, make 
their canvasses in a negative way 
which makes it twice as hard for them 
to sell insurance. Every time you 
give your prospect a chance to say 
“NO” you help him reinforce his 
strength against you. If, in making 
a canvass, you can answer your man’s 
questions by asking him another one, 
you can very often gain admissions 
and expressions from him that will 
give you the right clue to the canvass 
which will enable you to close him 
quickly. Ask him questions which 
call for a positive answer—questions 
which commit him to the necessity of 
insurance and his obligation to his 
family. 

Another thought that I want to 
leave which an agent can always use 

104 


THE AGENT’S ATTITUDE 


in his canvass, and that is to be mas¬ 
ter of the situation as long as he is 
making his canvass. In every situa¬ 
tion where there is a decision to be 
made, some person must be the mas¬ 
ter, whether it be the better judgment 
in a business way, whether it be the 
antagonism of enemies or whether it 
be the salesmanship ability of the 
agent. 

Recently I heard of a preacher of 
the western plains who was a great 
big man, six feet tall, sincere and 
honest in his teachings, who tried in 
the early days to preach to the fron¬ 
tier cow boys in the west. The re¬ 
sult of his preaching for a long time 
was that he would just about get 
started good in his sermon when 
somebody would shoot up the meeting 
and that would end it. He tried all 
means of persuasion in an effort to 
make his meetings what they ought 
to be, but to no avail. Finally he de¬ 
termined to change his methods, and 
105 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


he determined that he would run his 
meetings himself. Therefore, when 
he would begin his services, he would 
state, “Now, boys, this is my meeting, 
and I expect to run it as long as I 
am here. I would like to have you all 
stay and hear what I have to say. I 
have a message for you, but if you 
do not feel that you can stay you had 
better leave now, because the man 
who starts anything is going to have a 
hard time to finish it”, and from that 
day forward every sermon that he 
preached to these frontiersmen was 
done with a six-shooter lying on the 
table in front of him, and he had no 
further disturbances in his meeting. 
In other words, he ran his meetings 
himself. 

Now, every agent must do this same 
thing. Every agent must be master 
of the situation, and as long as he is 
making his canvass he must be mas¬ 
ter of that particular situation, and 
he must run his meeting. He must 
106 


THE AGENT'S ATTITUDE 

hold the attention of his prospect. It 
is hard enough to master his mind 
without any interruptions or diver¬ 
sions or allowing a man himself to 
take charge of the situation and ruin 
his prospects of an application. Many 
a prospect will seek to combat you 
and throw you off the right track by 
one method or another. Sometimes 
it is in a joking way. If it is, bring 
him back to the seriousness of the 
situation so far as he and his family 
are concerned. Others have various 
methods of throwing you off and 
keeping you away from the applica¬ 
tion which you are in hopes of getting, 
but if you haw* your mind set upon 
the one goal—the signature of the ap¬ 
plicant—you can always bring him 
back with the right kind of tact, and 
you will get the application if you 
have persistency and good judgment 
and the tact to master your situation 
and make your canvass what it ought 
to be. So, I say that in making your 
107 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


canvass, you ought to use judgment 
and tact on your approach. After 
you have made the best approach 
that you can—and you should make 
your very best efforts on every pros¬ 
pect—then be master of the situation 
as long as you are there. In other 
words, be like the preacher of the 
plains—run your meetings just as 
long as you hold them. 


108 


Modern Life Insurance 
Estates 


. 




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CHAPTER IX 

Modern Life Insurance Estates 

The growth of life insurance in the 
United States for the past 25 years 
reads like a fairy tale. Xo other busi¬ 
ness in the world has ever seen the 
growth and the magnitude that life 
insurance has attained in the past few 
years. Within the memory of every 
person present we have seen insur¬ 
ance on the lives of individuals in the 
United States grow almost 20 billions 
of dollars. In 1890 the life insurance 
then in force in the United States on 
our citizens was $3,500,000,000. In 
1915 the population of the United 
States had reached about 100,000,000, 
and those people carried almost $23,- 
000,000,000 of insurance. The assets 
of the companies during that time 
have grown and increased in regular 
proportion until today the assets of 
111 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


the Legal Reserve Life Insurance 
companies in the United States total 
almost $6,000,000,000. The total 
money of the United States is about 
four and a half billions of dollars. 
The assets of the life insurance com¬ 
panies is more than the total money 
in the United States. It is suffi¬ 
cient to purchase every bank in the 
United States and have several mil¬ 
lions of dollars left. 

The magnitude of the life insurance 
business—the business in which you 
are engaged—is one that makes it 
tower above every other business 
with which you come in contact. You 
are engaged in the greatest business 
in the world. Notwithstanding the 
great growth of life insurance in the 
United States, as we have just seen, 
it is estimated that there is less than 
10% of the population of the United 
States insured, and almost all of the 
population are under insured. The 
field for the life insurance agent never 
112 


MODERN LIFE INSURANCE ESTATES 


was so great as it is today. The field 
was never in such good condition as 
it is today. The people are awake to 
insurance estates. They realize that 
the insurance estate is the best estate 
there is to leave, and that it is one 
that does not need a lawyer or court 
to administer. The man who leaves 
this kind of an estate knows that his 
beneficiary will not be delayed in re¬ 
ceiving the estate that he leaves to 
them, and that there will be no charge 
against it—no court fees to pay and 
nothing to deduct from it—but that 
they will get exactly what he has pro¬ 
vided for them and in the way that 
he has provided. 

Today it is a matter of general 
knowledge that the life insurance cor¬ 
poration is the best managed business 
in the world. There is no exception. 
There is no kind of business that is 
required to make such strict reports 
to the Government, and which has 
8 113 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


such strict supervision by the Gov¬ 
ernment as does the insurance busi¬ 
ness. 

The laws of Illinois have very 
strict requirements for insurance 
companies governing them in all the 
following transactions of the busi¬ 
ness : 

Organization, 

Monthly Reports, 

State Examinations, 

Legal Reserve, 

General Provisions Law, 
Investments. 

As well as being the greatest finan¬ 
cial institution in the world, insur¬ 
ance is the most scientific. It is the 
things that we do not know that keeps 
the world moving forward. Did you 
ever stop to think about that ? It has 
been things that we did not know that 
caused all of the inventions in the 
world. Every great accomplishment 
has been made because of the uncer¬ 
tainty of something against which the 
114 


MODERN LIFE INSURANCE ESTATES 

the person was working. It is the un¬ 
certainty of life that is the foundation 
of insurance. That is the cause for 
building up estates. If we knew the 
exact date of the death of each per¬ 
son there would be no need for insur¬ 
ance. Did you ever stop to consider 
that if the Creator, instead of leaving 
the uncertainty as to the time of 
death, had fixed the time for each and 
every person, that this great world 
would be in a state of anarchy ? That 
there would be no business of any 
stability—that there would be no 
character to anything that we do or 
anything that we have ? But an All¬ 
wise Providence has arranged things 
differently, and the striving to create 
and prepare assets against calami¬ 
ties that are liable to come at any 
time makes people strive to excel each 
other—places them in positions where 
they are desirous of the welfare of 
their beneficiaries and consequently 
makes places for the insurance es¬ 
tate. 


115 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


As the world has progressed in 
every other line, so it is in the matter 
of estates that are left by persons who 
go to join the great majority. There 
is not one of us here but who has stood 
at the grave of a friend who has gone 
beyond and after the services 
heard asked by someone, “What es¬ 
tate did he leave?” or “Did he leave 
any insurance ? ” “ How will his fam¬ 
ily be fixed?” Today society looks 
upon every person as having a duty 
to provide for his own and to leave 
something for the care and welfare 
and protection of the ones he leaves 
behind. 

The business man of today recog¬ 
nizes the fact that he must not only 
leave an estate to his wife and child, 
but he must provide for the invest¬ 
ment and maintenance of that estate. 
Hence, Income Insurance. He rec¬ 
ognizes the fact that by his efforts 
he may be able to build up large es¬ 
tates, and that the ones to whom he 
116 


MODERN LIFE INSURANCE ESTATES 

leaves it may not be capable of tak¬ 
ing care of it in the way that he has 
cared for it, and it may soon be en¬ 
tirely dissipated, and he sees the wis¬ 
dom of providing that what he will 
leave or at least a part of it be in¬ 
vested from the day of his death and 
paid to his relatives in the way that 
will do them the most good. THE 
MONTHLY INCOME. 

When the greatest financier the 
United States has ever had from a 
money standard died a few years ago 
he left his estate all in trust for a cer¬ 
tain number of years. That man was 
J. Pierpont Morgan. His will was 
nothing more or less than a great 
sized Income policy payable to his 
relatives. Many very great men have 
done the same thing, and today as you 
go forth over your various communi¬ 
ties in soliciting insurance and creat¬ 
ing estates, you should not forget to 
advise your clients that a part at least 
of their insurance should be income 


117 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


insurance to go exactly where they 
intended that it go, and invested so 
that not one penny of interest be lost 
out of the fund that he has provided 
for each person. 

The insurance man of today creates 
his own job. There are local agents 
who should be holding general agents’ 
jobs, and all in the world that is pre¬ 
venting it is their own lack of energy, 
ambition and push. There are not 
many men holding general agencies 
who have not the ability to do so. That 
is, they do not hold them very long. 
The general agent must have a tele¬ 
scopic view, not only of his territory, 
but of the business. He cannot be 
a narrow minded, narrow sighted, 
short visioned man and get very far 
in the organization and development 
of the territory as a general agent. It 
is necessary that he push himself fur¬ 
ther forward than the organization of 
a township or small community. He 
must look forward to the building of 
118 


MODERN LIFE INSURANCE ESTATES 


small agencies under his own agency 
and the uniting of all together in one 
strong union upon exactly the same 
principle as the parent company is 
building, and whenever the agent— 
be he local agent or general agent— 
has pushed himself above the head¬ 
line of the rest of his fellow men, he 
has then created for himself a niche 
in the insurance business from which 
he cannot be dislodged, and he will 
promptly take his place among the 
men who are creating and building 
and maintaining the great insurance 
business that is growing and expand¬ 
ing as it has today. In that way he 
builds his own job, and no person can 
build it for him with any degree of 
efficiency, and no person but himself 
can accomplish anything along this 
line except to help him in getting the 
opportunity to build and grow. 

But there are many agents who 
think that they should have territory, 
and perchance have a vision that does 
119 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


not extend beyond their own 
town or their own ward or 
their own little community. Any man 
who has that idea in his head will do 
well to just take stock of himself and 
think for a few minutes what is re¬ 
quired of a general agent, and let him 
think that the company wants him to 
look beyond today and tomorrow and 
next week and next year beyond his 
own little community and his own 
county and look out into the general 
field surrounding him, and know 
where the business is and know 
where it can be obtained and how it 
can be obtained, and all those things 
that go to build up and make a general 
agency what it ought to be. 

The general agent must have 
proven himself before he can hold 
down a job in which the company re¬ 
quires him to make good. To turn 
our territory over to an agent means 
that that territory must either be de¬ 
veloped or lay dorman, and if it is 
120 


MODERN LIFE INSURANCE ESTATES 


not developed then the man is charge 
of it has not been successful. There 
is no need of trying to develop sales¬ 
manship without taking into consid¬ 
eration the vision of the man selling. 
Astronomy did not stop when the 
telescope was invented, but they went 
farther, and today they measure light 
waves with an instrument whose ac¬ 
curacy is correct to the millionth of 
an inch. They tell us just what ele¬ 
ments are in the sun and the quanti¬ 
ties of each. They are counting and 
tabulating today thje movements of 
some 400,000 distant stars whose dis¬ 
tance are measured in light years. 
The science of salesmanship should 
make just as great progress. Sales¬ 
men should push out first and discover 
the great points in the problem of dis¬ 
tribution, and then intensively ex¬ 
amine the elements of each point. 

What I mean is that the salesman 
should be a salesman in the broad 
conception of the term. He should 
121 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 

be a man who can look out beyond the 
limits of a local geographical terri¬ 
tory. We want to get away from the 
back yard salesman. It has been dem¬ 
onstrated as an absolute fact that 
salesmen today on an average are only 
30% efficient, and that out of 100 men 
only one becomes wealthy. Only four 
are well to do and 55%, between the 
ages of 50 and 60, are dependent. That 
is, they have no regular incomes and 
depend on their children or relatives 
or the county for support. Is it any 
wonder then when we know that the 
salesmen and the people disposing of 
our commodities are only 30% effi¬ 
cient that this condition exists ? What 
would be the condition if every man 
were 100% efficient, as he ought to 
be? 


122 


The Agent a Public 
Benefactor 










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• • 


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CHAPTER X 

The Agent a Public Benefactor 

Knowing the Life Insurance agent 
as I do, I always want to doff my hat 
to him and pay to him a personal tri¬ 
bute. Standing here today at the 
summit of this splendid age, sur¬ 
rounded by the riches and wealth of 
the greatest country on the face of 
the earth, let us gaze for a time on 
the scene which the past has left us 
as our richest heritage—in the midst 
of a section of this great country of 
the United States whose production 
excels the wildest stories ever told of 
the Valley of the Nile—here where 
live the flower of the human race, in 
the midst of a population of thrifty 
people who produce annually $750,- 
000,000 worth of corn, $250,000,000 
worth of wheat and $250,000,000 
worth of cattle, we are prosperous 
125 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


and alive to the advancement and 
progress of the United States in its 
entirety. 

Fifty years ago, under the same 
bright sun which shines today, our 
parents and grand-parents passed 
their lives in what to them was a great 
age of progress and advancement, and 
it was. We are compelled to look 
to history for a record of that time. 
Here in the United States the people 
were just then recovering from the 
bloody Revolution, of which history 
records so much. They were just lay¬ 
ing aside weapons of war and begin¬ 
ning to don the apparel of peace. 
From that time forward progress has 
been made in everything which the 
hand of man has touched as a busi¬ 
ness or occupation. At that time the 
institution of life insurance was a 
very meager struggling business, 
touching only a very slight part of 
the United States. It soon grew to 
be a great factor in the business 
126 


AGENT A PUBLIC BENEFACTOR 


world, and, as has been the course 
with every business and institution, 
it pushed its way westward with the 
progress of the times, and as we stand 
here today we gaze into the western 
horizon and see standing out in bold 
relief the greatest institution in the 
civilized world—that of life insurance 
—and emblazoned across the front of 
this great institution in letters that 
burn like fire we see its object, the 
building of better homes; the protec¬ 
tion of business and the building and 
creating of estates. There is not a 
home in the land that does not know 
directly or indirectly of the far-reach¬ 
ing benefits of this great institution. 
There is scarcely a home into whose 
door has not come some of the bene¬ 
fits of the life insurance policy, and 
many of the homes exist today sole¬ 
ly out of the proceeds of an estate left 
by some thoughtful person who looked 
into the future for those he loved. 

Ever since civilization began the 
127 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


striving and struggling of the human 
race has been for a home. Great 
wars have been fought for the preser¬ 
vation of the homes and the better¬ 
ment of families; empires have been 
overturned to prevent the destruction 
of the HOME and the entire course 
of the race of people has been changed 
for the sole purpose of the betterment 
of their homes, and always standing- 
out as heroes of those great epochs 
are those persons who have advocated 
the betterment of the homes and who 
have been responsible therefor. 

Go back through history and the 
persons who stand out as beacon 
]ights are those who have been of bene¬ 
fit in the building of the nation 
through its homes and through the 
betterment of the individual therein. 
The accomplishments worth while 
have been made by some person who 
had great love for the home; great re¬ 
membrance of happy childhood; a 
burning desire to build for posterity. 

128 


AGENT A PUBLIC BENEFACTOR 


One cold, stormy night, overtaken 
by misfortune, poverty and sickness, 
an American citizen went down the 
streets of Paris and climbed the stair¬ 
way to the garret in which he slept. 
Down into the darkness of the night 
poured the cold, sleeting rain, which 
pierced his thin clothing. Suddenly 
a door opened and the light streamed 
forth and revealed to him the warmtu 
of a fire-side. Into the arms of the 
man who stood upon the threshold, 
just returning from his day’s work, 
two children leaped while the beam¬ 
ing mother held forth to him her babe. 
In a moment the door closed, the light 
faded into darkness and the youth 
stood alone again in the street in the 
cold. That night, shivering in his 
room, this youth lighted his candle, 
and though the tears fell upon the 
paper within like the rain without, his 
heart went wandering across the sea 
to see the old homestead again. He 
crossed its sacred threshold and saw 


129 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 

again the warm smile of his mother 
and heard again his father’s voice. 
He heard, as of old, the shouts of his 
playmates, and with streaming eyes 
and loving heart he saw the vision 
splendid and gave to the world 
“Home, Sweet Home”. This was 
John Howard Payne, our honored 
American citizen, and he is singing 
this grand old song to us yet across 
the centuries. And when we think of 
all of the men who have grown to be 
great in history as benefactors to 
mankind, I think of what is being 
done today that may live in the future 
and go down in history as things that 
are worth while. And as the past rises 
before me like a dream I realize that 
we have even greater men today labor¬ 
ing for humanity and doing the things 
that are vastly more far-reaching than 
did many men whose fame will live 
for all time, and I cannot help but 
compare some of these achievements 
and accomplishments with those of 
130 


AGENT A PUBLIC BENEFACTOR 

the men whom I sincerely believe to¬ 
day to be the greatest of all bene¬ 
factors to mankind—the life insur¬ 
ance agent. Then a greater vision 
arises and I see thousands of agents, 
these ambassadors of the greatest 
business on earth, silently going to 
their daily business of benefitting 
mankind. 

The task is not an easy one—it has 
its hardships; it has its trials and trib¬ 
ulations. I see him pleading with the 
father to insure his life for the bene¬ 
fit of his son, and hear this father 
tell him that he will not create an es¬ 
tate for his son because he knows that 
he is a strong, healthy young man 
and will be able to take care of him¬ 
self as he himself had done when he 
was a boy. I hear this human bene¬ 
factor pour forth his every argument 
for the betterment of mankind: “Do 
you, as the father of this boy, that you 
now love so well, know that 80% of 
the boys in America leave school be- 
131 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


fore they complete their high school 
studies? You want your boy to be 
educated don’t you? Do you know 
that only 1% of the American men 
get a college education? Do you 
know that 90% of the criminals in 
the United States come from the un¬ 
educated masses, and do you know 
that 80% of the criminals commit 
their first crime between the ages of 
12 and 16 ? My good man, you want 
your boy to be as good as your neigh- 
boy’s best boy, don’t you? You want 
your boy to have as good chance as 
you can give him, and you owe that 
to him on account of having brought 
him into the world”, and I say to you 
that the person who convinces a man 
and induces him to create an estate 
under this kind of circumstances for 
the betterment of his family, that that 
person deserves to go down into his¬ 
tory as a public benefactor. 

The scene changes and I see him as 
he pleads with the stem father to in- 
132 


AGENT A PUBLIC BENEFACTOR 

sure Ms life in favor of Ms daughter. 
I hear the refusal and the excuse that 
his daughter will get along—that she 
will soon get married, and that she 
will be taken care of, and again I hear 
his argument for the benefit of his 
daughter: “Do you know that 59% 
of all the girls in this country between 
the ages of 16 and 20 are earning their 
own living? Do you know that 75% 
of the girls leave school before they 
have completed their high school 
course? Go into the great cities and 
see that gaudily dressed character 
that flits under the lamplight from 
street to street and tell me the 
reason why 80% of these fallen women 
are from homes which they were com¬ 
pelled to leave during their tender 
years. My God man, you want your 
daughter to have as good a chance as 
your neighbor’s daughter, don’t you? 
You don’t want her to want during 
her tender years, and you want her to 
have a chance to grow to womanhood 
133 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


in the sunlight of a pleasant home. 
In fact, you want her to be as good 
as she is now; you want her to have 
the same chance you would like for 
your mother or your wife to have’*. 
And when I see a person of 
this kind who convinces this father 
and causes him to create an 
estate to take care of that daugh¬ 
ter, I say to you that this man de¬ 
serves to go down on record as a bene¬ 
factor of mankind. 

Again the scene changes and I see 
this same agent pleading with the man 
to insure his life for the benefit of 
his wife. I see the prospect refuse and 
hear his excuses; hear this great force 
of human energy as he convinces his 
prospect and secures from him his 
application and creates an estate for 
the protection of his wife and his 
home: “Do you know that 69 out of 
every 85 people who reach age 60 are 
dependent upon someone for their liv¬ 
ing? Do you know that 89 out of every 
134 


AGENT A PUBLIC BENEFACTOR 

100 persons who die leave nothing at 
all? Do yon realize that 75% of the 
American widows earn their own liv¬ 
ing? Your wife is 40 years old now. 
Suppose you should die within 5 years 
and leave her. Do you realize that a 
woman 45 years old has no commer¬ 
cial value ? That no firm or corpora¬ 
tion will employ her? Do you know 
what your duty is in this regard”? 
I say to you that any person who goes 
forth in the community and convinces 
the people of their duty to protect 
their wives and their homes, and thus 
make mankind better, not only de¬ 
serves to go down in history as a pub¬ 
lic benefactor, but deserves a place in 
the hall of fame, and as these same 
men go farther along life’s pathway 
they realize more and more that life 
is worth living. They grow to see the 
good in everything; they look up in¬ 
stead of down; they see the dew up¬ 
on the flowers, the color in the rose, 
and see the heavenly love that per- 
135 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


meates the human family. These are 
the men who can hear the patter of 
the feet of little children; who can 
see the longing in the eyes of the grow¬ 
ing youth; who can see into the days 
of old age, and provide against com¬ 
ing sorrows of that time. These are 
the men who are truly great, and the 
life of every one of these men is a 
pathway running back to a good 
mother’s knee who loved and guided 
him and taught him the great truths 
of life, and the way to live, and the 
way to fight the battles of life, and the 
way to die. 


136 


Duty to Policyholders 




CHAPTER XI 
Duty to Policyholders 

We are told that for the first forty 
years the Children of Israel wandered 
through the wilderness groping their 
way, getting their bearings and hunt¬ 
ing a home. Then the next forty 
years were spent in building the great¬ 
est temple the world has ever known. 

The history of insurance in the 
United States is not unlike the ancient 
wanderers. For many long weary 
years did the great institution of Life 
Insurance struggle and grope its way 
until it was firmly established as one 
of the greatest businesses of the 
American people, and thoroughly in¬ 
stalled in their midst as their firmest 
and solidest institution—the one 
which anchors the American home to 
society and binds together with 
bands of steel the members of the lit¬ 
tle fireside unit; the very foundation 
139 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


of our government. Now we are in 
the midst of the building period and 
already the structure is taking pro¬ 
portions which compare favorably 
with the ancient temple of the wan¬ 
dering tribes. This temple of ours 
is rising to its heights with not a 
whit less of human sacrifice than did 
the other. The ancient temple housed 
humanity in its divine worship; this 
one of ours is builded out of human¬ 
ity—human interest is the cement 
which holds it together. 

Let me liken insurance to a great 
melting pot into which is poured hu¬ 
manity, with all its riches and all its 
poverty; with all its strength and all 
its weakness; with all its character 
and all its dross, and out of the whole 
must come a great common good—a 
great individual good. Human be¬ 
ings labor to leave a legacy when they 
pass beyond. There is someone near 
and dear to whom there is an obliga¬ 
tion. Hence an estate must be creat- 


140 


DUTY TO POLICYHOLDERS 


ed. That estate must be as large as 
can be left, and it must have in it an 
element of safety beyond question. 
Hence the institution of insurance is 
just as essential and necessary to the 
operation of this country as our banks 
or other institutions. And notwith¬ 
standing the fact that less than 10% 
of humanity is covered by life insur¬ 
ance, the estates left in life insurance 
constitute 87% of all which Ameri¬ 
cans leave at death. 

We are told that in England and in 
bleeding France there is not a home 
in all the land into whose door has 
not come the shadow of the great con¬ 
flict now raging in Europe—the touch 
of a hand which leaves sorrow and 
bereavement. That two out of every 
three persons wear mourning. Con¬ 
trast with this sad picture the visit 
to almost every home in America at 
some time or another that great bene¬ 
factor, the life insurance representa¬ 
tive, paying a claim, robbing death of 
141 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


a trail of poverty and suffering. One 
picture is the terrible devastation of 
war, the other the great benefaction 
of Life Insurance. 

Today we have forcibly demonstrat¬ 
ed to us the spirit of self sacrific. The 
citizens of this great nation have been 
called upon to help bear the burdens 
of their brothers. They have nobly 
banded themselves together and re¬ 
sponded with money, brains, muscle, 
blood and life itself. These sacrifices 
are great and are receiving our com¬ 
mendation. And yet there has for 
generations been practiced in our land 
almost as great sacrifices. Thirty 
million men and women banded them¬ 
selves together in Insurance Compan¬ 
ies, and, often with great sacrifice, 
have carried Life Insurance policies 
to help lighten the burdens of the 
more unfortunate. 

MUST GIVE SERVICE 

The Insurance Companies derive 
their patronage from the healthy citi- 
142 


DUTY TO POLICYHOLDERS 


zens of the entire country. Then what 
should be the nature of the relation 
between the Home Office and the old 
policyholders? This is a day of ser¬ 
vice—service which is real and 
meritorious. Service which really 
serves. And that company reaps the 
greatest harvest which puts into the 
field the fullest measure of service. 

First, then, the Insurance Company 
must get so closely in touch with its 
policyholders that a part of the ser¬ 
vice that is given him is a thorough 
understanding of the kind of com¬ 
pany which has issued his policy. The 
character, nature and stability of its 
investments securing him and his pol¬ 
icy estate should be shown to him. All 
investments should be only in securi¬ 
ties which do not fluctuate. Every 
company seeking public patronage 
should make thorough publicity of all 
its investments and matters of this 
kind, because truth is the daylight of 
the human soul and flashes through 
143 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 

us all. Policyholders should also be 
taught the fallacy of the statement 
that policies are good only at death. 
They should be shown that each pol¬ 
icy is as valuable to him every day of 
his life as a farm or any other kind 
of property, and the companies pay 
to living policyholders more money 
during the course of a year than they 
pay to the beneficiaries as death 
claims, thus saving many a 'person 
and many a firm from financial em¬ 
barrassment and ruin. It is to the 
best interest of the company as well 
as the insured to teach each policy¬ 
holder, as a part of humanity, how 
better to live, that he may live longer. 
The company which does not co-oper¬ 
ate with its policyholders in all mat¬ 
ters touching insurance and habits of 
living is not availing itself of the 
greatest asset within its reach. Some 
form of free medical examination 
should be accorded to the policyholder 
144 


DUTY TO POLICYHOLDERS 


at stated periods. This is an invest¬ 
ment which will show large returns. 

Second. It is of the utmost im¬ 
portance in the building of the great 
temple of insurance that every policy¬ 
holder as well as every beneficiary 
have a good and favorable impression 
of the institution of insurance. In 
order to get that thoroughly instilled 
into him, there should be no dealing 
or transaction which is not absolutely 
open, clean cut and above board. For 
a great many years the court records 
of our country made the poorest 
recommendation to be had for insur¬ 
ance companies. Claims were contest¬ 
ed. Some of them unjustly contest¬ 
ed, and again many unjust claims 
were paid. It was necessary that the 
insurance companies go through a 
period of litigation which settled its 
policy contracts and the rights, pow¬ 
ers and privileges of the contracting 
parties, and yet many times taking 
advantage of technicalities made those 
145 


10 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


differences into drawn out litigation 
which resulted in the very poorest sort 
of advertising. This period of liti¬ 
gation is past and gone, and the opin¬ 
ion of the public has changed from 
one of suspicion to one of confidence. 

Within the past ten years law suits 
in which Life Insurance Companies 
have been involved have been practi¬ 
cally none, and the few law suits in 
which Life Insurance Companies 
were parties have been principally 
those in which the company was a 
third party and not one of the real 
contestants in the suit. There yet 
will be law suits where there are con¬ 
tentions between different parties 
over the proceeds of an insurance 
policy and the insurance companies’ 
names will appear in the record, but 
the time of technical litigation for 
the purpose of defeating a claim is a 
matter of history, and the insuring 
public realizes that the companies to- 
146 


DUTY TO POLICYHOLDERS 


day pay claims under policies with¬ 
out objection, and pay them prompt¬ 
ly- 

The person who creates an estate in 
life insurance wants to know that he 
is dealing with an institution which 
is not only stable, and which has com¬ 
plied with the laws of our land, but 
he also wants to know that when his 
part of that contract is performed and 
when the company is called upon to 
perform its part by turning the creat¬ 
ed estate over to his beneficiary, that 
at that time there will be just as 
straightforward dealing with his ben¬ 
eficiary as there was with him. If he 
knows there will be no law suit he is 
better satisfied. The incontestable 
clause in policies has done much for 
the benefit of insurance generally. 
Companies today can, in their every 
act and dealing with the policyholder, 
create that good impression and feel¬ 
ing which will be one of confidence, 
and which will do more for the better- 


147 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


ment of insurance than any other 
thing which can be done in any pos¬ 
sible way, because faith is the first 
requisite of success. 

MOTTO SHOULD BE: “POLICYHOLDER IS 
ALWAYS BIGHT ” 

I have often thought that we can 
learn a great lesson, which can be put 
to very practical use, from the motto 
of one of the great hotel managements 
in this country. The one rule of ser¬ 
vice of the great Statler Hotels which 
stands out above all others is, “The 
guest is always right”. If the insur¬ 
ance companies would adopt that very 
rule in regard to its policyholders and 
have it chiseled over the door of every 
Home Office, “The Policyholder is al¬ 
ways right”, and have this instilled 
into every Home Office employee and 
representative so that when the pol¬ 
icyholder has dealings with the Home 
Office he will feel that he is among 
friends, whether his dealings be by 
148 


DUTY TO POLICYHOLDERS 


letter or personal visit, then that pol¬ 
icyholder would be just as enthusias¬ 
tic over his company—just as en¬ 
thusiastic over insurance and as well 
pleased as a guest is in dealing with 
the Statler Hotel or with any great 
commercial institution which today 
delivers service that pleases. 

No matter if this old world of ours 
has gone mad on commercialism, no 
matter how hard every individual 
works for the attainment of riches and 
property, there is yet left in each in¬ 
dividual some of his natural character 
which well directed human interest 
will touch. In no other kind of busi¬ 
ness or institution does human inter¬ 
est play so important a part as it does 
in Life Insurance. 

Life Insurance enters the life of an 
individual at two all important times. 
It is sold to him and policy issued 
when he is made to realize the neces¬ 
sity of creating an estate for the pro¬ 
tection of someone—for the protec- 
149 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 

tion of his family—of his credit or 
for himself as he grows older and be¬ 
comes less able to work. The next 
call of Life Insurance is usually at a 
sad, dark moment in the history of 
the family—when the individual is 
dead and when the estate which he has 
builded is needed for the maintenance 
of the family in the payment of the 
last debts of the insured. If the Life 
Insurance Company sees to it at these 
two supreme moments, by dealing 
with the insured and the beneficiary, 
that everything is done to please— 
that in every transaction a full meas- 
use of service is given—there is no 
reason why every person included in 
those transactions will not be, not only 
enthusiastic believers in insurance, 
but warm personal friends of the com¬ 
pany—friends who will bring more 
business and who will keep on the 
books of the company every policy 
which is carried by a relative or 
friend of those parties. The agent 
150 


DUTY TO POLICYHOLDERS 

should make the policyholder know 
and feel that the deal is not a closed 
incident when he has paid his first 
premium and received his policy, but 
that the agent’s and the company’s 
service to him is just beginning. That 
the contract and this relationship es¬ 
tablished thereby is one of partner¬ 
ship, unity and co-operation. 

SERVICE THAT PLEASES 

In the commercial world today one 
of the largest items of expense of 
every progressive business concern is 
money paid for the furnishing of ser¬ 
vice to the patrons of the institution. 
The object is, at all times, to give a 
service which will make friends, be¬ 
cause everything else being equal 
friendship gets the business. It may 
be in the hotel management only the 
little act of furnishing a morning pa¬ 
per free of charge, or the employment 
of a particular clerk who has ability 
to immediately get the guest’s name 
151 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


correctly as soon as he registers, and 
call him by name before he leaves the 
desk. It may be in a banking insti¬ 
tution the employment of a person of 
ability peculiarly adapted to meet the 
customers and make them feel at ease 
and find their every want and need, 
or it may be in a great department 
store the arrangement for the many 
little courtesies which touch the fancy 
of the customers of that institution so 
that they feel a personal friendship 
and a desire to return to the store, 
whether they have other purchases to 
make or not. All these things are just 
little acts in the natural way of honest, 
sincere citizens in the transaction 
of their business. The miraculous is 
always the natural. We have seen 
these little acts of service, these things 
which all blended together and add¬ 
ed to the commercialism of the United 
States has made it grow within the 
last few years to proportions which 
were never dreamed of before. 


152 


DUTY TO POLICYHOLDERS 


Particular attention is given by 
every progressive institution to make 
it easy for its patrons to deal with it. 
The telephone aids the grocer in get¬ 
ting his orders; good credit systems 
have made department stores grow; 
while the artistic tempting display of 
goods has increased the business of all 
retailers. All these little matters are 
of big importance. When we under¬ 
stand the psychology of business life 
we know what results little acts of 
service bring. Therefore, everything 
from the training of salesmen to the 
smallest detail of handling of the 
Home Office work is of the utmost im¬ 
portance in insurance just as well as 
it is in all commercial institutions. 

Life Insurance Companies have 
been slow to adopt the progressive 
elements of service which have built 
other institutions into great success¬ 
ful structures, but the ones who have 
realized the importance of this ad¬ 
vance movement today and have taken 
158 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 

advantage of it show in their records 
of business built and retained, and 
in their list of satisfied policyholders 
an enviable reputation, all of which 
is a greater asset than anything else 
that the institution can build. It is 
worth more to any Life Insurance 
Company to have it known that it 
deals satisfactorily with its policy¬ 
holders in all its transactions and that 
it is accommodating; that it is 
an institution that is alive and 
up-to-date; one to whom a policy¬ 
holder can go for advice, if you 
please; a reputation that it pays its 
claims upon its policies upon the pre¬ 
sentation thereof without delay and 
without technicality. I say it is worth 
more to Life Insurance Companies to 
have this reputation than it is to have 
the reputation for any other thing in 
the world, because that is the real 
reason for Life Insurance Company’s 
existence. Many companies to¬ 
day pay death claims before the in- 
154 


DUTY TO POLICYHOLDERS 


sured is yet buried, thereby rendering 
to the beneficiary in time of need a 
service which is* of much value to her, 
and an act which she will not soon 
forget. 

In order to render true service the 
company must have clean agents, and 
these agents must be taught that it iu 
not only a part of their business, but 
it is an absolute requirement of their 
company that they give service to 
policyholders and to the general pub¬ 
lic. That service should not stop 
with soliciting a policy and paying 
death claims, but it should extend to 
the making of friends for his particu¬ 
lar compan}^ and for insurance gener¬ 
ally, and it should extend to the build¬ 
ing of a business for himself in a way 
which will give him a reputation of 
“Insurance Counsellor’’ in the com¬ 
munity in which he resides. 

ELIMINATE EED TAPE AND DELAY 
And in order to further render true, 
efficient and lasting service every 

155 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


Home Office employee must be taught 
that “The Policyholder is always 
right”. No technicalities must be 
dwelt upon to annoy and disturb pol¬ 
icyholders. But there should be a 
simple, efficient and diplomatic con- 
sumation of every deal, leaving the 
policyholder impressed with courtesy 
and fairness, as well as business. 

The company’s rights should be 
protected, but the benefits to the in¬ 
sured should be given to him with a 
speed and courtesy in keeping with 
the business methods of the times. 
Therefore, it is necessary to have able, 
efficient and diplomatic heads of de¬ 
partments at the Home Office and 
local offices to carry on all dealings 
with policyholders. No great com¬ 
mercial institution dealing with the 
public will have an employee who deals 
with or meets the public, who does not 
do so with such efficiency, courtesy 
and diplomacy that his dealings will 
retain the established trade and bring 
156 


DUTY TO POLICYHOLDERS 


more. Every transaction must be 
sincere and must appear so. Sincer¬ 
ity and not trickery or chicanery 
builds the solid business. Life In¬ 
surance is a sacred, sincere business, 
and in it there is no place for aught 
else than sincerity. The company 
never grows too large to keep closely 
and intimately in touch and acquaint¬ 
ed with its policyholders through its 
various organizations. 

INSURANCE A SENSITIVE BUSINESS 

Sometime ago the world was start¬ 
led by the statement that the time was 
not far distant when a person would 
speak and every other person with a 
magnetic ear so trained and attuned 
would hear. No matter where he be 
—no matter how far distant, whether 
he be in the depths of the deepest mine 
or upon the heights of the highest 
mountain—every person with that 
magnetic ear would hear that com¬ 
munication. This extravagant thought 
157 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


furnished to us in the insurance busi¬ 
ness an illustration which to me is 
very fine, and that is this: Life Insur¬ 
ance is a very sensitive business. And 
every act and transaction with a pol¬ 
icyholder makes a record which is 
spread out to the public. The good 
company so conducts its busi¬ 
ness and carries on its transac¬ 
tions with policy holders in a way 
that it is like the laying of the hand 
upon the shoulder of a friend. All 
its acts enter into its good reputation. 
Its good character is spread from per¬ 
son to person. Everyone hears it. 
Every little word that is breathed is 
heard by all of them. No matter 
from what point of the compass comes 
the little breath of thought or act it 
is heard and carried on. 

But if the company does not so 
build up such a reputation for correct 
dealing and transactions with its pol¬ 
icyholders and beneficiaries, then 
every word that is spoken and every 
158 


DUTY TO POLICYHOLDERS 


act that is done is also always heard 
by every policyholder and by every 
citizen in the entire country. And its 
reputation is one for unfairness, in¬ 
sincerity or unjust dealings. And the 
scandal which makes a bad reputa¬ 
tion travels faster than light or sun¬ 
shine or good thought or words—it is 
hard to check or stop. Then, if we 
at the Home Office realize that every 
policyholder hears and every policy¬ 
holder knows the acts and transac¬ 
tions of the company, and if we rea¬ 
lize that we should make those actions 
and transactions an open book to all, 
so that they will be reflected by the 
policyholders into a reputation that 
will be for good and for the better 
building of the company, then I think 
the company is transacting its busi¬ 
ness in the way that it should, and 
whenever its dealings are so recorded 
and whenever the policyholder is 
made to feel that the company is his 
friend and is interested in his welfare, 
159 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


the business will stay on the books and 
the waste of securing new business 
one year and letting it go off the books 
the next year will be eliminated. The 
policyholders with whom we are per¬ 
sonally acquainted and who know us 
and understand us and our company 
do not terminate their policies save 
by maturity or death. Then it does 
really pay to cultivate the policy¬ 
holder with the utmost intimacy. 

There is no member in attendance 
at this convention today but who, if 
he went over to one of the stores in 
this city for a purchase and was ac¬ 
corded the kind of service which a 
live, up-to-date business house of to¬ 
day must give, will go away remem¬ 
bering that institution. But how 
much more would you remember it 
(and avoid it) if you were given very 
poor service and very poor impres¬ 
sion of the store ? Now then, why not 
let’s realize and build into our Insur¬ 
ance Companies the same kind of ser- 
160 


DUTY TO POLICYHOLDERS 


vice that we expect to have accorded 
to us when we go into any other kind 
of institution today for any business 
dealings ? It is not hard to do—it is 
not hard for us to make our literature 
so that it gives this impression. Most 
of us have eliminated the red tape 
which annoys and disgusts everyone; 
all we want is a simple record of 
transactions. It is not hard for us to 
gather into the Home Office employees 
who must realize that “The Policy¬ 
holder is always right” and who will 
act accordingly. 

It costs us nothing to be courteous. 
It costs us nothing to be prompt, nor 
will it add to our expense to build up 
a reputation for fairness and prompt¬ 
ness and sincerity and one of friend¬ 
ship just like the friendship of an in¬ 
dividual. The warm expression of 
friendship, human interest and sin¬ 
cerity in letters can be written upon 
the same typewriter which formerly 
161 


11 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 

printed the cold and grouchy words 
which made dissention and trouble. 

Every transaction with a policy¬ 
holder is of enough importance that 
it should be thoroughly understood 
by the employee handling it so that 
he can intelligently handle it with 
speed and without any bungling, and 
at the same time give the impression 
of interest in the policyholder and the 
utmost sincerity in the transaction. A 
little bit of instruction and training 
will make every agent get into per¬ 
sonal touch with his policyholders and 
the public in general. Money is much 
better spent and the company gets 
much more for it to teach an agent, 
who is the company in his particular 
locality, to say to everyone: 

“Hullo!” and “How d’ye do? 

How’s the world been using you?” 

I say much better results are ob¬ 
tained by the spending of money to 
create human interest in Life Insur¬ 
ance in our own individual company 
162 


DUTY TO POLICYHOLDERS 

than by flaring head lines that John 
Smith, the President, is the biggest 
man in the world. We can not elimi¬ 
nate all the grouchy agents, but we 
can go a long way in improving them 
by a little instruction, training and 
rules requiring service which is real 
service. Service to policyholders, ser¬ 
vice to our competitors, service to the 
public—all of this is service to our¬ 
selves. 

Then I say to you that the duty of 
the Home Office to the old policy¬ 
holder is to render to him service, 
which is in its every act honest, 
meritorious and sincere, first by sell¬ 
ing to him as much of an insurance 
estate as he can afford to create, and 
then by seeing to it that every act and 
every transaction had with him by 
mail or interview is so conducted that 
he knows he is dealing with friends 
who are interested in him and in his 
welfare. Make him feel and know 
that human interest in this old world 
163 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


is not dead, but that along the path¬ 
way of life there are green spots, and 
then when shoulders touch shoulders 
bearing the great burdens of life, a 
sincere sympathy exists which eases 
the load, and when hands clasp it is 
in a friendly sort of a way which al¬ 
ways makes him feel that “The Pol¬ 
icyholder is always right”. 


164 


Organizing for Success 


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CHAPTER XII 
Organizing For Success 

Today we have our record before 
us for the things accomplished during 
the past year. The total amount of 
business produced by the company 
was most satisfactory. The question 
now remains for each one of you to 
ask of yourself whether your record 
during 1917 has been what you think 
it should have been. Almost every 
state in which we are doing business 
made its quota last year and closed 
the year with a very creditable 
amount of business. We have set for 
the company and for each of our¬ 
selves an allotment of new business 
for 1918. What the officers of this 
company have asked themselves is 
“How can we produce the allotment” 
and now the question that we want to 
ask each and everyone of ourselves 
individually is “How will we do it?” 

167 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


The answer of the company should 
be the answer of the individual. We 
have our allotments made. We have 
our determination to do what we have 
alloted for ourselves, and for that 
reason we shall accomplish what we 
have determined to do. There is 
nothing in all this world—no force 
that has ever yet been discovered— 
that can resist the determination of a 
sincere man in a good cause. Syste¬ 
matic plans always win. No general 
can win a battle without his plans. 
Every battle that has ever been won 
has been done upon plans previously 
made. 

None of us can forget the incident 
in the life of the great Napoleon when 
he was awakened one night by one of 
his officers and told that an attack had 
been made on one of his strongholds, 
and he said: “If you will look in the 
right hand pigeon hole of my desk 
you will find the plans for resisting 
this attack”, and with that he went 
168 


ORGANIZING FOR SUCCESS 


on with his sleep and the battle was 
won. Without plans, without fore¬ 
thought nothing is done. Without 
determination Watt never could have 
produced the steam engine, nor Ful¬ 
ton his steamboat, nor Goodyear his 
rubber, Morris the telegraph, Bell the 
telephone, Edison the electric light, 
nor Marconi the wireless telegraphy. 

Through all the history of the world 
achievements have been accomplished 
by plans. Most people think too much 
of quantity and not enough of qual¬ 
ity. A lot of people lose sight of the 
fact that what they want in some¬ 
thing to last for the years to come, 
and not just simply for today. Every 
man of you knows that a record can 
be made in insurance if you look only 
to this day or this week or this 
month, but the true kind of record of 
which you will be proud is one that 
looks to the future; one that secures 
solid business of the very best class 
that will stay on the books. Look to 
169 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


quality. The quantity will take care of 
itself. Then, if you will just simply 
make the determination which I hope 
each and everyone of you have made, 
that throughout 1918 you will put 
your trademark on every finished 
piece of your work; that you will put 
your character into your work, you 
will gain strength and make a greater 
success. We all realize what strength 
comes from doing a completed job. 
Every time that we accomplish some¬ 
thing that is difficult, every time we 
make a record for ourselves we simply 
raise our standard that much. 

The real person that we should com¬ 
pete with is ourself—our own person¬ 
al record. Outstrip our yesterdays 
with out todays, and set a higher 
mark for tomorrow. Accept nothing 
short of your very best, and be a verit¬ 
able steam engine of power. When 
you have this determination and when 
you have put such quality into your 
work that anyone who comes across 
170 


ORGANIZING FOR SUCCESS 


anything that you have done will 
see your character and your trade¬ 
mark on it, then you are a success 
and a great success. 

In all your work your reputation 
is at stake, and the character of your 
work will follow your reputation. 
You should be so envious of this repu¬ 
tation that you regard every piece of 
work done as the great Stratavarius 
regarded every violin which he ever 
made. He put his very self into his 
work, and every violin which he 
turned out was perfect. To this day, 
after hundreds of years, not one of 
these violins has ever been known to 
come apart or be poorly constructed, 
and today there is not one of them 
but what will sell for from five thou¬ 
sand dollars up to fabulous prices. 
You can buy a violin for $3.00 that 
looks just as good, but the marker did 
not put quality into it. He did not 
stamp his character upon his piece of 
work. He did not demand of himself 


171 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


that every piece of work turned out 
be the very best that he could do. 

HOW CAN WE IMPROVE OUR SELLING 
METHODS 

Thousands of times have I thanked 
the Lord that our agency force does 
not have for its goal the dollar mark 
and an application. In other words, 
our men are not working for the dol¬ 
lar alone. Were that the case this 
company would not have been able to 
renew 98%% of its business during 
3917. We have a broader vision of 
salesmanship than the mere dollars 
and cents that we get out of what we 
are doing. The fee is not the goal of 
the doctor as he sits at the side of your 
sick child hour after hour nursing it 
back to life; the fee is not the goal 
of the lawyer when he works day and 
night to win a case of his client, and 
money should not be the goal or aim 
of the true salesman today. To ren¬ 
der service should be his goal, and the 
172 


ORGANIZING FOR SUCCESS 


remuneration will come without 
question, and will come to him quicker 
than it will ever come in any other 
way. The day of haphazard sales¬ 
manship is past and gone, and we are 
all glad of it. We all know today that 
we must be prepared to go into the 
field and give service. Service is 
what counts, no matter in what kind 
of salesmanship we are engaged. If 
we do not give service, which is equal¬ 
ly good, if not a little bit better than 
our competitor, then we are not doing 
our best; then we are not at the top 
of the ladder in our profession. 

We have all seen a great pianist 
schooled in his art sit down at the 
piano and running his fingers over the 
keys, create a beautiful melody. He 
knew where to touch one here and one 
there to produce harmony and the de¬ 
sired effect. He was an artist. He 
knew his profession. But a person 
not schooled in music sitting down at 
the same piano can make just as much 
173 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


noise, but the only effect would be to 
drive everybody out of the neighbor¬ 
hood. And just so it is with sales¬ 
manship. If you do not know your 
profession just as well as the other 
fellow you can not make the sale. 

Salesmanship today is based upon 
knowledge and intelligence. Strategy 
and deceitful salesmanship today lasts 
for a shorter length of time than ever 
before in the history of the world, and 
rightly so. Our prospects today are 
better posted than they ever were be¬ 
fore, and when we sell an insurance 
policy we should always try to sell it 
in the way that will not only absolute¬ 
ly convince the applicant of the neces¬ 
sity of insurance, but show him exact¬ 
ly what he is buying, so that the policy 
will stay with him and stay on the 
books of the company until it is paid 
as a death claim. Then the agent 
writing the business should reap a 
great deal of satisfaction in paying 
174 


ORGANIZING FOR SUCCESS 


to the beneficiary the estate which he 
has created for his friend. 

The true salesman today realizes 
that we get out of life just exactly 
what we put into it. We may start 
out with a great whoop and hurraw 
on some false line and seemingly be 
making good and taking down this 
world’s goods in a wonderful way, but 
as time goes on the law of compensa¬ 
tion exacts its toll, and when the sum 
total of life is taken the individual has 
gotten out of life just exactly what 
he put into it. The sooner an agent 
realizes this great principle the soon¬ 
er will he be a better and bigger man 
—a better success in his business. We 
all remember the story of Louis Ag~ 
gasig, the great naturalist, and we 
remember the lesson that his mother 
taught him when he was yet a little 
boy. He was born in Switzerland, 
and one day when he was yet a little 
fellow his mother took him up into 
the tops of the mountains—up among 
175 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 

the crags where the echoes are the 
most wonderful in all the world. She 
told him to call to other boys whom he 
could not see. He did so and a thou¬ 
sand echoes came back to him. This 
was all strange to him, and again he 
called, “Who are you?” and a thou¬ 
sand “Who are you’s” from the tops 
of the crags came floating back to 
him. He became angry and again 
shouted ‘ 4 1 hate you ’ ’ and a thousand 
“I hate you’s” came floating back to 
him. His mother then said to him: 
“My son, you see things in the wrong 
light. Don’t be angry but say ‘I love 
you’ ”, and he shouted, “I love you” 
and a thousand “I love you’s” came 
floating back to him from the tops of 
the crags. His mother then ex¬ 
plained to him that it was her inten¬ 
tion to teach him in this way what 
she considered the greatest lesson of 
life, and that is that we get back just 
exactly what we give in this life. Thus 
had he learned his lesson at this early 
176 


ORGANIZING FOR SUCCESS 


age in his youth, and it always stayed 
with him to the end of his life and was 
a great influence over him. 

IMAGINATION A NECESSARY QUALITY 

To me one of the most important 
qualities in a salesman is his imagina¬ 
tion. The salesman without imagi¬ 
nation is dead. The salesman who 
does not picture out his course for to¬ 
day—for tomorrow, for the week, for 
the month and for the year and for the 
years to come—is not a success. There 
never has been a railroad built across 
this great continent, but the track 
first was an image in the brain of 
somebody who conceived it. There 
never has been a great steamship 
built but the plans were pictured 
out in the mind of someone before 
hand. All of the great structures of 
this world and all the great things we 
have been building were at one time 
castles in the imagination of someone. 
Columbus imagined that he could sail 
177 


12 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


west until lie came to another conti¬ 
nent, and hence the discovery of 
America. There never has been a 
great picture painted but that the 
picture did not first rest in all its de¬ 
tails in the mind of the artist. The 
artist could not transfer to the can¬ 
vas an image unless it was in his im¬ 
agination. You must have an image 
before you can create, and if the agent 
has the right kind of imagination, 
based upon the right kind of system 
and right kind of brain, and then if 
he is in dead earnest, his prize in this 
life can be anything that he names, 
because a sincere, earnest salesman 
has a high niche in the structure of 
this country. 

The trouble with too many sales¬ 
men is that they are not acquainted 
with themselves. The average man 
is not acquainted with himself. He 
does not know his horse power. He 
does not know whether he is a Pack¬ 
ard or a Ford. He does not know his 
178 


ORGANIZING FOR SUCCESS 


endurance. The average man has 
never put himself under pressure to 
know what he can accomplish, and it 
is just as important that a salesman 
know his capacity as it is for a per¬ 
son to know what horsepower motor 
car he is buying. No one would ex¬ 
pect to buy a machine which would 
not accomplish the things for which 
it was intended. No salesman should 
expect to put himself in an agency 
which required 100 horse power when 
he only had 25, but the first thing that 
an agent should do is to test himself 
to see how much he can do. Not how 
much he can get by with, but how 
much he can accomplish and turn out 
during the day’s work, every piece of 
that work approved by his own con¬ 
science. Then he will know where to 
classify himself. He will know how 
to make up his allotment. He will 
know how to accomplish his sales, and 
he should not expect to do it all in 
one day. We cannot do everything in 
one day. 179 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 

Our lives are made up of years, and 
at the most we accomplish but very 
little during the entire life. Things 
of permanency take time. If we want 
a squash we can grow it over night, 
but it takes a century to grow an oak. 
Boys, we have a life to live—then, 
why not let’s plan that life and make 
it a success. Everyone of you have 
read about the growth of the United 
Steel Company, and you know who 
built this great company. Everyone 
of us have seen this great company 
grow from a little institution to the 
largest in the world, and everyone of 
us have heard that this institution 
was built by Andrew Carnegie and 
Bill Jones. The growth of this insti¬ 
tution was entirely upon plans and 
upon merit. Plans made by Andrew 
Carnegie—plans executed by Bill 
Jones. Thousands of men working in 
the different plants in that institu¬ 
tion strove to the very limit of their 
strength to make their record every 
180 


ORGANIZING FOR SUCCESS 


week so that their particular plant 
would be the one on whose tall smoke 
stack would be the Carnegie broom. 
This broom was an indication that 
their factory had stood first. Every¬ 
one of them competed in an honest 
competition which put every man to 
the test and made every person effi¬ 
cient. 

Another thing that we should do in 
order to improve our selling methods 
and make each of us a better success 
is to be positive. We should think 
positive thoughts. It is “ I will ’ ’; “ I 
can”; “I must” that make men suc¬ 
ceed. The man with a goal never gets 
tired, and the sincere man with a goal 
never fails. Study the lives of great 
men. Everyone of them had a goal. 
General Grant was a positive man 
with a goal, and was successful. Col. 
Roosevelt is a positive man with a 
goal, and has succeeded. So it is with 
every other man, and just so it is with 
every salesman. He must know what 
181 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


lie intends to accomplish and then, 
with all the sincerity and earnestness 
which he can command, he must put 
his whole self into the reaching of that 
goal. 

Then another thing that every man 
must do is to concentrate on each case. 
We all know that it is not the thing 
that we do actually accomplish which 
tires us, but it is the warding off of 
all the things that detract our atten¬ 
tion that wears us out. If we can con¬ 
centrate our own selves and make our 
prospects concentrate for a short 
length of time, we will make our sale 
and make it easily, but we must put 
up with detractions in almost every 
instance. There are noises to be con¬ 
tended with. Talks on other subjects 
lead the prospect away from the sub¬ 
ject. All these things must be con¬ 
tended with. Edison invented the in¬ 
candescent light by concentrating on 
it for days, without any detractions 
whatever. Without even taking time 
182 


ORGANIZING FOR SUCCESS 


to eat or sleep. Then every man who 
is a salesman should learn to concen¬ 
trate upon his subject, and he should 
teach his sub-agents to do so. 

Another thing that the general 
agent should do is to show his sub¬ 
agents how to do the business. Not 
tell them to go and do it, but tell them 
to come on and he will show them how 
to do it. Every sub-agent that you 
hire expects two things of you and 
those two things are: first, the money 
he expects to earn; and, second, the 
education which he expects you to 
give him, and that education can be 
given to him better by practical dem¬ 
onstration of how to sell policies. 
With that kind of education and with 
that kind of work almost 100% of our 
agents ought to be successes in the 
business. 

HOW CAN WE IMPROVE OUR AGENCIES 

Our agencies can be improved by 
improving the men constituting the 
183 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 

agencies. A chain is just so strong 
as its weakest link; an agency is just 
so strong as its weakest man. If 
there are drones in an agency, if there 
are men who are holding back, if there 
are men who are not sincere and earn¬ 
est, they should promptly be eliminat¬ 
ed. They have no place in our busi¬ 
ness, no place in your agency and you 
cannot be successful with them. Every 
general agent should keep so closely 
in touch with his sub-agents that he 
knows just exactly who these agents 
are; knows the condition of the man 
himself; knows the condition of his 
family; in every way has a complete 
knowledge of every phase of the man 
and his work, and then the general 
agent should know the nature of the 
man. Should know how to deal with 
him and please him and make a good 
impression on him. And then, after 
he knows all of those facts, he should 
so deal with him that the sub-agent 
will love him and accomplish great 
184 


ORGANIZING FOR SUCCESS 


things for him. This is the secret of 
an organization. 

I never thought that a man who is 
worth anything could be driven in his 
business. Observation has proven 
that theory to me. Not only is it true 
in business, but it is true in army life 
and every other phase of existence. 
A great general strives to have his 
men love him to the extent that they 
will obey his orders—die for him if 
necessary. Just a few days ago I 
read of some of our senators and their 
wives visiting in France. They had 
a desire to see the great battle fields 
and see conditions as they actually 
existed in the trenches. While on 
their way to the trenches they met the 
great General Joffre and three of his 
private soldiers. They were intro¬ 
duced to him and told him that they 
were on their way to see the great 
battle line and see the heroes of this 
great world war. He said to the 
speaker: “Lady, if you will just 
185 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


close your eyes and stretch forth your 
hand and touch anyone of these three 
soldiers you will have your hand on a 
hero’’. His men so loved him and 
obeyed him that they would readily die 
for him in obeying any command that 
he made. It was this spirit that made 
them obey his orders at the battle of 
the Marne when he told them that it 
was necessary that his plans be car¬ 
ried out and that their positions be 
held at all hazards, even death. Your 
men will do and die for you if they 
love you, and if you are alive to your 
duties as general agent you will cause 
them to love you, and you will get so 
close to them that they will accom¬ 
plish things for you which will make 
your agency a great success. We have 
agencies which do this. We have 
many of them in which this spirit pre¬ 
vails and is evidenced by their growth. 

TEST YOURSELF 

The average man can do four times 
as much as he regularly does. Many 
186 


ORGANIZING FOR SUCCESS 


men need something to test them in 
order to get the best results. A gen¬ 
eral agent should watch for these 
kind of men and deal with them ac¬ 
cordingly. If he finds that he has a 
sub-agent who does not get the best 
out of himself unless he has someone 
with a record to compete with, he 
should see to it that at all times that 
man has that incentive to make him 
do his best. Get up friendly rivalry. 
Spirited contests are good stimulants. 

We of us who like to see a horse 
race know that the horse has to be 
warmed up before he can make his 
record. We have stood at the race 
track and heard people talking about 
how cruel it was to be running the 
horse around on the track before the 
race, seemingly making him do his 
very best and keeping it up until he 
was in a perfect lather of perspira¬ 
tion, and yet we know that the horse 
was enjoying that very thing, and 
that it was bringing him out to do his 
187 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


very best. Then if we look through 
history we will see that the great 
struggles in life have been by striving 
at another record or trying to ac¬ 
complish something that someone else 
was accomplishing, and the very 
greatest things that have ever been 
done have been accomplished when 
two men of equal strength were com¬ 
peting in business or in an effort of 
some kind, and each tried to do their 
very best. 

Tests have proven that when a man 
does what he thinks is his best he is 
still able to do better. We remember 
that many tests of this kind were 
made within the last few years. One 
upon laborers who were put to the test 
of working until they were exhausted 
and were doing what they thought was 
their level best, and then the supreme 
test came and they were able to do 
more. The one great thing that you 
have to do in dealing with your agents 
is to get them to work steadily with 
188 


ORGANIZING FOR SUCCESS 


an aim in view, so that when all of 
their work is put together and when 
your work is added to it the sum to¬ 
tals a successful agency. You know 
that your agency is built up of indi¬ 
vidual records of the men composing 
it. In other words, out in your terri¬ 
tory your agency is the company. It 
is a little company being operated out 
there, and its record is good or bad— 
just as you make it. Its reputation 
is good or bad—just as you make it. 
All of these agencies put together 
make the company’s business, and the 
company’s business is good or bad, 
just as the business of these agencies 
is good or bad and its reputation 
is good or bad, just as the agencies are 
good or bad. 

Insurance is a sensitive business. 
—the most sensitive business in the 
world. Each policy holder hears and 
knows the least breath that is said 
about your company. If your deal¬ 
ings with your policyholders are such 
189 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


that their impression is good, if every 
bit of the reputation that you have 
made is reflected by him into a good 
name, then you have built a business 
of which you should be proud and the 
company should be proud, and then 
our record will be good. But if you 
should so deal with the policyholders 
or with the public that your reputa¬ 
tion is not good, or if a reputation has 
been made of requiring a lot of red 
tape—a lot of technicalities—of 
slow dealing or unfair dealing, then 
your reputation will not be what it 
ought to be, and the little words of 
slander which cause a bad reputation 
travel faster than light or sunshine 
and are magnified into a bad name. 

The Peoria Life has always been 
proud of her name, proud of her 
agents, and today we are proud of 
every man here. We are so proud of 
our general agencies that we have seen 
fit to list the allotments set for each 
man in one long list and hang them 
190 


ORGANIZING FOR SUCCESS 

in this convention hall so that every 
person can see just what every other 
person is expected to accomplish; so 
that you can select someone with 
whom you can compete; so that you 
can strive to make your record better 
than your allotment and better than 
any other one on the list, and next 
year when we come back to our An¬ 
nual Conference at Peoria we are go¬ 
ing to have this same record here, and 
we will check up with the members 
present and we will see who has made 
himself efficient and who has made 
his record what he thinks it ought to 
be. The company expects to accomp¬ 
lish this allotment and more. We 
have our determination made. We 
have our plans made and we expect to 
put them into execution to accomp¬ 
lish the results, and then besides main¬ 
taining our agency force and the 
writing of ten millions of business, we 
expect to accomplish another thing 
during 1918, and that is to build a 
191 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


Home Office Building, and when we 
come back to our conference next year 
we hope that we may hold that confer¬ 
ence in the convention room of our 
own Home Office Building. 


192 


What Constitutes a 
Successful Agent 


18 


















CHAPTER XIII 


What Constitutes a Successful 
Agent 

Choosing a Profession 

The first requisite of success in an 
insurance agent is that he must care¬ 
fully and properly choose his profes¬ 
sion. He must select his profession 
with just as much care and just as 
much careful consideration as the doc¬ 
tor decides upon his profession. The 
medical profession is no more impor¬ 
tant than that of life insurance be¬ 
cause, like the physician, the life in¬ 
surance man has the lives of people 
placed in his hands. He must choose 
his profession with just as great care 
as a person chooses the banking busi¬ 
ness, because it is just as big busi¬ 
ness and is just as important business 
as the banking business. He should 
choose his profession of life insurance 
195 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


with just as much care as the person 
decides to take up the legal profession, 
because it is just as dignified, and 
there is just as great a duty resting 
upon the life insurance man as there 
is on a lawyer when he is selected to 
care for and protect the estate of an 
individual. He goes farther than 
that—he defends and protects the 
homes of our land. He should choose 
that profession with just as much care 
and just as much pride as he would 
decide to go into the ministry, because 
the ministry itself is no more sacred 
profession than that of the life insur¬ 
ance business. 

After he has chosen his profession 
and decided to make it his life work, 
decided that it is the kind of business 
in which he wants to spend his entire 
life, then he must be loyal to that pro¬ 
fession. He must not feel that there 
are any excuses to be made for it. He 
must believe in his profession. If 
he does not believe in it just as strong- 
196 


A SUCCESSFUL AGENT 


1 y as lie would believe in any other 
business in which he could embark, 
then he has made a great mistake, and 
has not properly chosen his profes¬ 
sion. It is necessary in order for a 
person to be a success in anything to 
be loyal to that task. If he decides 
to be a life insurance man he must 
believe that the life insurance busi¬ 
ness is the best business and biggest 
business and most wonderful business 
on the face of the earth. He must do 
that to have the proper enthusiasm to 
carry him forward to success. 

EDUCATION 

After he has chosen his life work 
in the insurance business he must 
educate himself. He must know in¬ 
surance. He must know the value of 
insurance; the necessity of it; what 
it does, and what it should do; he 
must know life insurance generally. 
In order to do that he should know 
about the formation of a life insur- 
197 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 

ance company; he should know that 
there are three kinds of insurance— 
the fraternal insurance which is pure¬ 
ly protection, and that fraternal so¬ 
cieties are made up of a large number 
of people who are paying each others 
insurance and each others death 
claims, and that they can exist just 
so long as new members continue to 
come in faster than the old ones die 
off. He must know that there is no 
protection back of the fraternal cer¬ 
tificate ; that they are not required to 
have on hands any money or invest¬ 
ments out of which claims can be paid, 
but that they depend entirely upon 
the assessment of the membership 
with which to pay their claims. Fra¬ 
ternal insurance has its place; has 
done a wonderful good in this land, 
but it is just like depending on the 
old leaky boat to try to cross the river. 
If you get half way across and sink 
your choice of conveyance has been 
poor. Fraternal insurance is poor 
198 


A SUCCESSFUL AGENT 

property to depend upon to carry you 
clear through life, and in this day 
and age a person must look at his life 
in its entirety. 

He should know that the next kind 
of insurance is assessment insurance, 
represented by those companies some¬ 
times called Stipulated Premium 
Companies. They start out with a 
level rate, but the policies have in 
them an assessment clause which pro¬ 
vides that the company can increase 
this rate at any time the officers de¬ 
cide to do so. All that is back of their 
certificates is one assessment on each 
policyholder. If he pay $1.00 a month, 
then they must have on hands $1.00 
for that person. If another one pays 
$12.00 a year, they must have $12.00 
for him. I do not hesitate to say that 
this kind of insurance is the poorest 
kind of insurance because it is just 
between the fraternal insurance and 
the Old Line insurance, without any 
supervision of the law which protects 
199 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


policyholders and is a make-shift 
which has done more to put insurance 
in disrepute than all else in the world. 
Most of the failures have been in this 
kind of insurance. 

Then, he should know Legal Re¬ 
serve Companies—the Old Line Com¬ 
panies. Whether they be Mutual or 
Stock companies, he should know 
them. He should know the legal re¬ 
quirement of their organization. He 
should know what protection is back 
of policies issued by companies of this 
kind. He should know that there has 
never been a failure of an Old Line 
life insurance company to the extent 
that policyholders have lost any part 
of the face of their policies. The 
most that they can lose is their divi¬ 
dends, if they have a participating 
policy. There has been reinsurance 
and consolidation of companies, but 
this did not affect the face of the pol¬ 
icy of a single policyholder. 

I say that the agent in order to 
200 


A SUCCESSFUL AGENT 


properly understand his profession 
should know these things. After he 
has informed himself on the general 
principles of insurance, then he 
should know his own particular com¬ 
pany. He should know why it is the 
best company in the world to work for, 
and if he does not believe that it is 
the best company then he should not 
work for it, but he should work for 
the one which he believes is the best 
company in the world. He should 
know why it is the best; why its poli¬ 
cies are the best. He should know 
in what character of investments the 
policyholder’s money is placed, and 
what rate of interest the investments 
bring. His company will be glad to 
inform him on all of the good things 
that tend to make it the best, and he 
should avail himself of the opportu¬ 
nity of securing that information. 

He should get himself imbued with 
all of these things which will help 
make him a success. Then, he must 
201 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


know liow to sell his policies. Not 
how to get rid of them, but how to 
sell them to people so that they will 
stay sold, and he must build himself 
into his community in such a way that 
he will be known, and that to know 
him is to know his company, and to 
know his company is to know one that 
is fair and square and that gives good 
dealing and gives SERVICE to 
every person in the community. 

MUST STUDY HUMAN NATURE 

Then, the person to be successful 
must study human nature. He must 
study it all the time, from the very 
day that he goes into the business un¬ 
til the day that he lays down his rate 
book. He must study human nature 
because it is through this study and 
from his ability to better read human 
nature that he will make more success 
in the insurance business. 

The life insurance agent is the 
greatest musician in all the world. He 
202 


A SUCCESSFUL AGENT 


plays on the heart strings of human 
beings; it is his music that enchants 
the entire world. He must know his 
business. He must know human na¬ 
ture in order to better develop him¬ 
self to the point of a successful agent. 
We have often seen a great musician 
seat himself at a piano and touch a 
note here and another one there, and 
out of it all bring great harmony that 
pleased and thrilled large audiences. 
WHY? Because he knew his busi¬ 
ness. He knew what he could do. He 
was thoroughly familiar with har¬ 
mony. Another person could touch 
the same notes and the same keys and 
bring no harmony out of the sounds 
because he was not versed in music. 

The life insurance man is the great¬ 
est artist in the world. He paints 
scenes of actual life from life. No 
matter what character of beautiful 
picture you may think about, the life 
insurance agent has been the greatest 
painter of them all. No one has ever 
203 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 

yet been able to transfer to canvas 
the scenes that the life insurance 
agent pictures to a man he knows is 
in need of a life insurance policy for 
the protection of his loved ones and 
for the protection of his home. We 
have seen great fireside scenes which 
have been painted by notes artists— 
pictures which have been sold as fabu¬ 
lous prices—but none of them ever 
touched the fireside scenes which 
were painted by the life insurance 
agent. No mother’s love was ever 
shown on a canvas in such a way as 
the life insurance agent shows it to 
the young man who needs protection 
of life insurance. No artist has yet 
been able to paint a landscape scene 
such as the life insurance man paints, 
because he animates his painting with 
little children who are the future men 
and women of the land and who need 
education and need to be given an 
equal chance with each other that they 
may fight the battles of life in a way 
204 


A SUCCESSFUL AGENT 


that will give them honored names in 
their respected families. 

These landscapes are also dotted 
here and there with people of all ages 
and in all conditions from the cradle 
to the grave, and if there was an ar¬ 
tist with a conception strong enough 
to reproduce the landscape pictures 
painted by the life insurance agent, 
there would be no limit to the price 
that would be paid for them. He 
paints portraits every day that are 
greater than any that have ever 
graced the walls of any European art 
institution. 

How many parents each day are 
made to see the true portrait of their 
child by the life insurance agent? 
How many times a day is the son or 
daughter made to see the true portrait 
of father and mother as they realize 
their duty and obligation as evidenced 
by the insurance policy, and in every 
picture that is painted by the life in¬ 
surance agent, in the very center of 
205 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


that picture, in a way that he cannot 
be mistaken is a true portrait and pic¬ 
ture of the prospect which he is can¬ 
vassing, and whenever he has proper¬ 
ly shown to the prospect the picture 
which he is attempting to paint to 
him, shown his own self in life form, 
he never fails to come away with the 
application. 

The life insurance agent is the 
greatest hypnotist in the world—the 
greatest mesmerist—greatest phycho- 
logist. I do not mean that he is the 
greatest in the technical terms of any 
of these sciences, hut I do mean that 
he is greatest in them because he is 
practicing them every day and is lead¬ 
ing men’s minds. I do not mean that 
he has seances and makes the table 
walk and such things as that, but I 
do mean that he leads the minds of 
people he deals with, and in that way 
is putting into practice the art of 
hypnotism, and that he is practicing 
this every day. Did you ever stop to 
206 


A SUCCESSFUL AGENT 


think that in every transaction it is 
only a question of whose mind leads ? 
If the salesman’s mind leads he makes 
his sale. If his mind does not lead 
then the other man’s mind does and 
he does not make the sale. 

It is necessary for the life insurance 
agent to have these qualities to under¬ 
stand and know how to lead men’s 
minds, because every one of us have 
thousands of times looked straight in¬ 
to a man’s eyes and read there in one 
glance more than he could have told 
us in a day’s time, and more than he 
ever would have told us. The eyes 
are the windows of the human soul, 
and every person is successful as a 
salesman in just such proportion as 
he is able to look into those windows 
and read the man’s mind within. 

The great Edison is deaf, and we 
are told that in his business life he 
sits day after day in councils in which 
great problems are being discussed 
and decided upon, and when Edison 
207 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


comes away without having heard 
very much of the conversation he 
knows what has been decided upon 
and what has been discussed, because 
he is one of the greatest readers of 
human nature in the world today. 
The salesman must always be alert to 
human nature. He must always be 
able to read it. 

The life insurance agent is the 
greatest dreamer in the world. He 
is a man who dreams without making 
dreams his master. He decides to go 
into the life insurance business; he 
makes his plans. He sees ahead; he 
sees estates in the future; he sees his 
agency in the perspective; he sees 
what he wants to build in the territory 
which he has, and he decides that his 
life work is not building pyramids 
such as were built on the desert of 
Egypt, but building a great agency 
which is an enduring monument for 
himself. No man is dead so long as 
he keeps on dreaming, because out of 
208 


A SUCCESSFUL AGENT 


his dreams will come good. Out of 
his plans will come forth success. 

Watt would never have invented 
the steam engine had he not been a 
dreamer. The steamboat would never 
have been an accomplishment of Ful¬ 
ton if he had not been a dreamer. We 
would not be able today to talk over 
the telephone if Bell had not been a 
dreamer. If Edison had not dreamed 
of light the world would not be blessed 
with electricity, and if Marconi had 
not been a dreamer we would not to¬ 
day have flashing from one hemi¬ 
sphere to the other by wireless tele¬ 
graph the great messages of the world. 
It was a dreamer who conceived the 
idea of starting the great railroad at 
Omaha, Nebraska, and ending at the 
Pacific coast, and hence the Union 
Pacific was built—built after men 
had dreamed. Not only the first man 
who dreamed of its plans, but the 
other great men who had to dream and 
209 


14 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


plan and execute great engineering 
feats which carried the rails on west¬ 
ward. 

It is by dreams and plans that we 
develop. Just as sure as we cease to 
dream, we cease to grow; we cease 
to advance; we cease to stride for¬ 
ward, and when we cease to do those 
things we begin to decay. The young 
man who is content is just en¬ 
tering into failure. He is al¬ 
ready taking on the color of 
the sear and atumn leaf. To 
stop, to stand still is to go back¬ 
ward, and decay is to run a rapid 
course back to nature—a quick return 
to that mother, earth, who puts no 
headstones at any of her graves. 
Live fish swim up stream; dead ones 
float down. You label yourself by 
which ever way you go. If you are 
successful it is blazed forth to the 
world. If you are a failure—a dead 
one—the world knows that too. It is 
for you—you men of worth-while 
210 


A SUCCESSFUL AGENT 


achievements—to drive a salient deep 
and wide into the outer rim of what 
today marks the measure of man’s 
greatest attainments. We must not 
be content with the lines as they are 
today. They must be broadened and 
extended, and we must grow bigger. 

We tell our sons of this country that 
they can each of them be President of 
the United States. It is well that we 
do this because every person is creat¬ 
ed free and equal. The people of this 
Jand established that fact in the Dec¬ 
laration of Independence. From the 
very lowliest cabin in this land there 
is a pathway stretching away to fame, 
and along its unpretentious course to 
the chief magistracy have gone our 
nation’s most illustrious sons, but in 
the business world the great mother, 
Opportunity, tells us that promotion 
knows no limit. There is no highest 
place in the business world. All may 
grow, and there is no top. The busi¬ 
ness man’s course is along the broad 
211 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


highway where high-power and steady 
speed always win. 

KNOW HOW TO SELL 

The life insurance agent must learn 
how to sell his policies just a little bit 
better than his fellow agents. He must 
be a student of his profession. Too 
many people quit studying when they 
leave school, but the life insurance 
man must study and progress just 
like a man in any other profession. 
The doctor must study his anatomy; 
the lawyer must read and re-read his 
Blackstone. WHY ? Because he 
must keep his mind thoroughly filled 
with those principles which make him 
a success. The life insurance man 
must do the same thing. He must 
keep up with his profession—must be 
well informed all the time. He must 
read the best insurance journals and 
publications. Your reputation is at 
stake in every act that you do. The 
life insurance man should at once re- 


212 


A SUCCESSFUL AGENT 


alize that in every canvass he makes 
he must put forth his very best ef¬ 
fort. I thoroughly believe that there 
are many sales lost by the life insur¬ 
ance man because he takes too much 
for granted. He thinks that his pros¬ 
pect surely knows this or that, and 
there is no need of covering it. It 
should not be taken for granted that 
the prospect is well informed on any¬ 
thing, and with this in view, the life 
insurance man ought to make his best 
canvass on every prospect. He should 
put his character into his work. He 
should accept nothing short of his 
very best at all times. He should 
make every sale in such a way that his 
name and his character will be 
stamped upon that piece of work, and 
it will be known as his work by any 
and all who see it. The man who does 
not put his whole soul and his true 
character and himself into his every 
transaction is not the success he 
ought to be. Every man can make his 
213 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


best just as good as any one else’s best. 
No matter whether his ability is as 
great as the next man’s, but if he ac¬ 
counts for the best that the Lord gave 
him he will have made his ~best just 
as good as the best of any other per¬ 
son—no matter what his ability may 
be. 

The fact that we can not today, 
after centuries have passed, buy a 
Stradivarius violin without paying 
therefor a fabulous price, is positive 
proof of the importance of putting 
character into our work. Not one of 
his violins ever came apart; not one 
of them was ever known to prove un¬ 
satisfactory. Many violins can be 
bought today for $3.00 a piece that 
Jook just as well, but they do not have 
the character. The person who made 
them did not put character and abil¬ 
ity and self into them. It is not a 
Strad. The life insurance agent 
should not work for the dollar alone, 
and today the great body of life in- 
214 


A SUCCESSFUL AGENT 


surance agents are not working for 
the dollar and the application, but 
the}^ are working to give SERVICE 
to humanity. Service which means 
much to this land; service which 
hieans that the people of this country 
are getting more for their dollars in¬ 
vested in life insurance than ever be¬ 
fore in the history of the world. 

You don’t imagine as the doctor 
sits at the bedside of that sick child 
day in and day out that he is sitting 
there solely for the fee that he will 
receive? No, he is trying to save a 
life; trying to give service to human¬ 
ity. The lawyer does not think of his 
fee when he works day and night pre¬ 
paring a case that will protect an es¬ 
tate or protect a home. He is think¬ 
ing of service he can give to humanity. 
It was not alone the courtesy of that 
clerk in a New York store on a rainy 
day which attracted the attention of 
Mrs. Andrew Carnegie, but it was the 
service that he gave her on that day 
215 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


which so impressed her that she 
selected him out of all the clerks to 
furnish Skybo Castle, and she did this 
even after she was advised hy great 
merchants that she ought to have a 
person with more ability and greater 
experience. It was because the young 
man had the spirit of service, and it 
showed to her in a way that made him 
a success. 

MUST KNOW VALUE OF TERRITORY 

The life insurance man in order to 
be a success must learn his territory. 
He must not only understand the ter¬ 
ritory which he has, but he must know 
how to organize it, and to know how to 
organize it he must first know what 
population it has. How many men^ 
how many women, how many 
children, how many banks, how 
many stores, how many business 
men. He must know all these things 
before he can know how much his ter¬ 
ritory is worth to him. Every terri- 
216 


A SUCCESSFUL AGENT 


tory is worth just so much and owes 
so much to the agent who has charge 
of it, and if that territory is not giv¬ 
ing to him all that it owes there is 
something at fault. 

After he knows his territory and 
knows its worth he should demand of 
it the production according to its 
worth. The National Cash Eegister 
Company says to its agents: “In 
your territory there are so many mer¬ 
chants ; so many people, who ought to 
use National cash registers; so many 
chances for sale or exchange of cash 
registers. Therefore this territory is 
worth just so much to us—so much to 
you. It owes us so many sales—it 
owes you so many sales. You are in 
charge of it, and if you cannot make 
it produce all it owes you and owes 
us, then you are not big enough man 
for the job, and you must take terri¬ 
tory in proportion to your size”, and 
this is the true system of insurance 
salesmanship. True system of any 
217 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 

kind of salesmanship covering terri¬ 
tory. The life insurance man should 
know every point of his territory 
thoroughly. If he is going to a differ¬ 
ent town he should know just what he 
is going to find when he gets there; 
who he is going to see; what assist¬ 
ance he will get after he gets there. 
He should know just exactly what his 
territory is worth to him. As he 
looks at this territory of his he must 
do so with a very broad vision. He 
should look at it with a telescope; 
not merely from his backyard over 
his own little village, but he should 
look at it with a broad vision that will 
give him a vision of the agency which 
he expects to build. He must look 
into the future years and see just at 
what point in his territory ne wants 
to improve, and he must lay a good 
foundation of that great pyramid of 
an agency which he expects to build. 

218 


A SUCCESSFUL AGENT 


WE GET OUT OF LIFE JUST WHAT WE 
PUT INTO IT 

Many an agent complains of his 
small earnings. Let me tell you who 
complain of your small earnings, if 
they are smaller than they ought to 
be you are the man to remedy that. 
You are the only person who can 
remedy it. You ought to analize your¬ 
self. Find out what is wrong; find 
out your horse power. If you have 
small earnings find out what is the 
cause of it. There are few men who 
know their power. There are very 
few persons who have tested them¬ 
selves to know just what they can do, 
and until you have done that you have 
no reason and no right to complain of 
small earnings. The world does not 
owe you anything except light and air 
and sunshine in which to live healthy, 
happy, ambitious lives. It is up to 
you, and entirely up to you what your 
earnings will be. If you realize early 
in life that you get out of this life 
219 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


just exactly what you put into it, you 
will have learned the lesson which the 
great Aggasig learned in the crags of 
the Alps when he heard the echoes 
coming back to him from a thousand 
unseen places, giving him exactly 
what he sent forth. 

The average man can do four times 
as much as he is doing. We have 
proven that time and time again in 
our contests. We go along for a few 
months without a contest and we find 
certain men just producing an aver¬ 
age amount of business. We put on 
a contest of some kind, and we see 
them produce several times their nor¬ 
mal production. This proves conclu¬ 
sively that they are in those normal 
times not working to their limit. The 
greatest work has always been done 
with a pacemaker. The greatest feats 
that have ever been accomplished 
were where one giant is pitted against 
another giant, whether it be in feats 
of human strength or in business. The 
220 


A SUCCESSFUL AGENT 


thoroughbred horses never runs a race 
without being warmed up, but when 
he is warmed up there is always a 
pacemaker to start him up and get 
out of him all that there is in him. No 
person with red American blood likes 
to see another person go ahead of him 
in anything. The life insurance 
agent who works upon this system is 
the man who is at the top of the pro¬ 
fession. 

It is not an easy job to sell life in¬ 
surance. It is not an easy profes¬ 
sion. If it were an easy business it 
would not be the biggest business in 
the world, because no easy business 
attracts to it men of great ability. 
There are too many agents who begin 
a general agency by trying to work 
it from the top down. They want to 
begin with a wonderful organization 
so that there will be some person to 
do all the soliciting. Some person 
else to do all of the collecting. Some 
person to hunt up all the pros- 
221 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 

pects. The person who jollies 
himself into the belief that he 
can do this and accomplish it 
all without work does nothing, 
and it is not very far away to the time 
when he will continue to do nothing 
because he will have nothing to do. 
Then there are those agents who are 
always hunting for an excuse so that 
they can avoid doing anything. Why! 
there actually are men who have start¬ 
ed to drive to a man’s house to sell 
him life insurance and continually 
hoped in their own minds that the man 
would not be at home so that they 
would not have to canvass him. That 
kind of a man is a failure. He has 
no ability. If he ever did have abil¬ 
ity he is letting it die. If the life in¬ 
surance man loves his work he knows 
that he must begin at the bottom. He 
knows that he must know how to 
close a prospect. He must know how 
to do his business in order to teach 
men under him how to do it. He must 
222 


A SUCCESSFUL AGENT 


know that he cannot build a general 
agency without the knowledge neces¬ 
sary for an agent in the field. He 
must know that chance never made a 
man. He never forgets the old legend 
of the father who told his son that he 
must begin at the bottom of every¬ 
thing ; that he must learn it all from 
the ground up, and he told this same 
son that in order to develop his phy¬ 
sical self he should begin by lifting 
the little calf and every morning he 
saw the son lift the little calf and as it 
grew larger and larger he continued 
to lift it, and the father was surprised 
one morning to look out and see him 
lifting the old bullock. He rapidly 
had grown in strength because he had 
begun at the bottom and trained him¬ 
self up day by day. 

We are told, “To him who hath 
shall be given”. If it is in a man it 
will come out unless it is smothered. 
If a man has ability and will let that 
ability show itself, it will come forth 
223 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


and make him a success. The study 
of biography is the greatest inspira¬ 
tion to the human being, and when we 
consider the lives of men who have 
made a success, when we see the great 
things that they have accomplished 
in the way that they have done, we 
are inspired to do those things our¬ 
selves, and we are inspired to climb 
higher in our professions. Horace 
Greeley had the gift of pen and na¬ 
ture gave him a thousand subjects to 
write upon. General Grant had skill 
in handling an army, and nature gave 
him great victories, and whenever any 
person begins with earnestness and 
determination to win, the Giver of all 
things will add to his wealth until he 
is successful, and if he folds up his 
talents and lays them away, even they 
will be taken away from him. 

THE LIFE INSURANCE MAN MUST HAVE 
SYSTEM 

There must be a system of habits 
in the successful life insurance man. 


224 


A SUCCESSFUL AGENT 


Your habits determine your success. 
If you have little ideals you will have 
little results. Therefore it is neces¬ 
sary for the life insurance agent to 
study system. No matter what sys¬ 
tem it be, I do not care whether it is 
card system or book system or what 
kind of system it may be, that will 
make his work successful; that will 
bring every piece of that work up to 
the top notch and make every piece 
a finished piece, then he has system 
that will make him successful. If he 
patronizes cheap places he will have 
cheap business. We can look over 
our books in the Home Office and de¬ 
termine without knowing the agent 
just about what kind of a man he is. 
We can tell the business that has been 
written through the club room; can 
tell the business that has been written 
on politicians and loafers. It does 
not stay on the books. 

Did you ever stop to think how 
many hours you have in your life in 
225 


15 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 

which to make a success? Some day 
take your allotment as stated in the 
Good Book, three score years and ten, 
and sit down and figure just what has 
been given you with which to make a 
success. You will find that there was 
allotted to you 600,000 hours to live. 
In your figuring of this problem you 
will find that you have spent about 
175,000 hours in school; you will find 
that you will spend about 142,000 
hours in sleep and that you have left 
out of it to build all of your life and 
all of your success only 283,000 hours. 
Then carry your problem just a little 
bit further and ask yourself if you 
can afford to lean over a cigar counter 
and spend two hour’s time throwing 
dice or in cheap conversation with the 
girl at the cigar counter whose time is 
worth $6.00 a week. Can you afford 
to throw away and waste two hours 
out of this 283,000 hours that you have 
in which to build your life ? If you 
have solved the problem rightly you 
226 


A SUCCESSFUL AGENT 


will determine that you cannot afford 
to waste two hours. Neither can you 
afford to waste one hour or one min¬ 
ute. Every one of them is worth 
dollars and cents to you. Not only 
that, but you should give strict ac¬ 
count of every one of them. You 
should return every little bit of the 
talents that have been given to you. 

I tell you that it is not a crime to 
fail in business. It is not failure but 
it is low aim that is crime. If a man 
has aimed low he will land low. If he 
has not aimed at the proper goal in 
his work he will never get there. If 
he doesn’t get the habit of working 
and realizing the time that he has 
spent to make himself a success he 
will not be a success. It is not 4 hours 
or 8 hours or 10 hours or 12 hours 
a day that makes a success, but it is 
SUCCESS hours that builds a life 
that stand as a monument and a mem¬ 
ory. 

Life insurance is a man’s job, and 
227 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


like all other big jobs it takes a full 
day to bring its results. Maybe I do 
not have the ability that you do; may¬ 
be I cannot make my success in 8 
hours like you can. I may have to 
work 10 or 12 hours, but it is my duty 
to begin early in the morning and 
work until the day’s work is done— 
not until the whistle blows, but until 
the day’s work is finished. Do you 
think that the biggest business in this 
world—the life insurance business— 
could be built as a side line ? Do you 
think that the people in that business 
could have built up their business to 
what it is today unless they had put 
their whole selves and their whole 
souls and their whole time into the 
building of it ? 

The life insurance man must have 
system of thought. He must think; 
he must make other people think. 
Right thought makes right men. He 
must continue to go back to general 
principles and occupy his mind with 
228 


A SUCCESSFUL AGENT 


the principles that will make him able 
to convince other men. In order to 
make men think he must make them 
feel. In order to make them feel the 
way that he is illustrating to them he 
must be alive, alert and up-to-date. 
He must be a little bit ahead of the 
procession; he must lead; he must be 
in front. It is a rule of the American 
army today that the officers must lead 
and when our army starts across “No 
Man’s Land” the captain is ahead. He 
may be the first to die, but he will be 
at his post, and will be doing his duty 
if he does. 

The life insurance man must be 
able to recognize the thing that is 
popular. We all remember that the 
“Full dinner pail” was the slogan 
that made McKinley President of the 
United States. We know that the 
“Cross of gold” is what made Bryan. 

One winter’s night in New England 
the science hall of a new college 
burned down. Without a science 


229 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 

building the college could not continue 
The head of the college realized his 
predicament. He boarded the train 
and went to New York to see Andrew 
Carnegie. He never had met him. He 
found him in his office, and after in¬ 
troducing himself said: ‘ ‘ Mr. Carne¬ 
gie, our science hall burned down last 
night and our college can’t continue 
without one. I want you to help me 
rebuild it”. Carnegie replied: 
“Young man, I’m not interested in 
colleges”. “Yes, but you are inter¬ 
ested in young men, and our young 
men need this hall very badly”. He 
had hit a soft spot in Mr. Carnegie’s 
makeup. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, 
young man. If you will raise $100,- 
000 in 30 days to rebuild your hall 
I’ll give you an equal amount”. 
“Give me 60 days and I’ll do it”. “All 
right”; and as the professor left Mr. 
Carnegie said: “Remember, now, 60 
days, no longer”. He had been in 
the office exactly four minutes. At 
230 


A SUCCESSFUL AGENT 


the end of 30 days he returned, hav¬ 
ing secured his subscription for $100,- 
000, and Mr. Carnegie gave him his 
check and said: “Young man, the next 
time you call on me don’t stay so long. 
That interview cost me just $25,000 
per minute”. The idea is the pro¬ 
fessor had his plans. He was alert. 
He knew his prospect was interested 
in young men and it was for them he 
made his appeal. 

The life insurance man should be 
quick to realize and recognize the 
thing that will carry him along, and 
that can help carry along the build¬ 
ing of an agency. He should never 
forget that Service is the magic word 
today. 

Up to this time most of our time 
in America has been spent in finding 
out what great stores of resources 
this country had and what could be 
manufactured out of them, but we 
have neglected the man development 
of this country. For years we have 
231 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


known the chemical analysis of steel, 
we have known the analysis of oil, 
and all of the technical mechanism of 
the different machines on the market, 
but we do not know man. 

For 50 years science has been ap¬ 
plied to the manufacturing business, 
but not to man. During the past few 
years things have been changed along 
that line, and hence we have sales¬ 
manship being developed to the high¬ 
est possible point, and it is your duty, 
you men who are successful salesmen, 
to get just a little bit closer to the 
barrage and as you go farther keep 
just as close to the barrage as possible 
and be alive. Give yourself a task to 
perform and let that task be a respon¬ 
sible one and a big one, bigger than 
you think you can perform, and let 
it cover your entire life. 

The happiest day of your son’s life 
is that day on which you give to him 
a responsibility which he feels and re¬ 
alizes is worth while, and that day of 
232 


A SUCCESSFUL AGENT 


your life will be the happiest when 
yon give yourself the task of building 
a life; when you have allotted to your¬ 
self what you expect to accomplish in 
your lifetime—not at the end of your 
life when you have closed it as a suc¬ 
cess, but on the day when you have 
laid out the task for yourself as your 
entire life’s work. Let that task be 
planned systematically. Let there be 
system to it all the time so that you 
can conserve every second and minute 
of the few hours allotted to you in 
which to make a success. Let it be 
planned, not for a day, but for a week, 
a month, a year, for a whole life time, 
and I do not care, as I said before, 
where you get your system or how you 
follow it, as long as you are serious 
and earnest and give honest hours to 
your task, you will be a success. 

Eemember that there never yet has 
been invented any kind of a machine 
that is able to resist the earnest, sin¬ 
cere efforts of an honest man, but sys- 
233 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


tem you must have, and the best way 
for you to get system is for you to 
study the system of other people. Sys¬ 
tem comes to very few people. It is 
by instruction that we get most of it. 
Most of us have to learn it. 

MUST HAVE PERSEVERANCE 

And then after the life insurance 
man has had system he must have per¬ 
severance; he must have that perse¬ 
verance which will enable him to carry 
out every plan that he has made; to 
enforce the system that he has estab¬ 
lished and carry it forward to success. 
Bach one of us is circumscribed by a 
circle outside of which we have no con¬ 
trol, but inside of it we reign supreme. 
Do you know your circle ? Have you 
found out just how far you have su¬ 
preme ability to control? It takes 
persistency to learn the business and 
the life insurance man must not only 
be well informed in his business, but 
he must be courteous; he must be tact- 
234 


A SUCCESSFUL AGENT 

ful; he must be business-like; he must 
be alive to the times. 

It was said of the building of the 
Union Pacific Railroad that it was 
built out of whiskey and tea, whiskey 
drunk by the Irish on the eastern end 
of it and tea drunk by the Chinamen on 
the western end. Every person who 
has read the history of the building 
of the Union Pacific knows that it was 
built out of the lives of human be¬ 
ings, and that from the time the first 
line was laid by the surveyors until 
the two lines of rails from the west 
and east met, and the golden spike 
was driven with a silver hammer on 
the summit of the Rockies, it was one 
stupendous task of persistency to 
overcome almost insurmountable ob¬ 
stacles. 

Every man should realize that every 
obstacle that he overcomes makes him 
stronger; makes him more able to 
cope with the next situation. For that 
reason, if for no other reason, he 
235 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 

should make every act of his life a 
supreme effort—an effort strong 
enough to accomplish what he has set 
out to do, and all of these acts by him 
in supreme efforts will make him a 
winner. Some people say “The next 
time I will put forth all there is in 
me”. There is no calendar that is 
made that has “Next time” on it. TO¬ 
DAY, RIGHT NOW is the only time 
to put forth all there is in you. You 
never know how important it is nor 
how important a time it may be in 
your life, and the man worth while is 
he who acts now. It is instinct with 
him. What do you work for when 
you go forth in the morning? Do 
you work to build that day a success ? 
Do you go forth to work for your 
wife and for your family? Would 
you like to have that day a success 
and recommendation for you? Are 
you trying to build a life that will live 
after you are gone? Would you like 
to give something to your folks and 
236 


A SUCCESSFUL AGENT 


to your friends to remember after you 
have passed to the great majority? 
Would you like to have your son say 
about you that dad was square; dad 
was earnest; dad was industrious, and 
dad was a success, or would you rather 
that they would like to forget the fail¬ 
ure that you are making of yourself ? 

THE SUCCESSFUL AGENT 

Then to sum it all up, who is the 
successful agent? It is he who has 
applied himself to his work with all 
his might and with all his soul. It is 
he who has climbed to the heights of 
his great profession of insurance and 
has viewed the great structure as she 
stands forth against the western sun 
with her golden windows ablaze with 
a glory of deeds well done. He who 
from the heights has seen the vision 
of widows and orphans who were not 
provided for, trudging their weary 
way through the villages of despair 
and want, and has heard the cry of 
237 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


their souls as crime is increased and 
as the record of immorality is made. 
He who has seen the beautiful rays 
of sunshine which gleam from the 
great golden dome of insurance as it 
lights the ways of business and makes 
it stable and permanent, as it shows 
the children the way to an education, 
thereby giving them all an equal 
chance with the neighbor’s boys 
and girls, which streams into 
mother’s kitchen and s bedroom 
and parlor and assures her that 
there she can remain because he 
who lead her to the altar on that won¬ 
derful day in June had kept his prom¬ 
ise to love and support her; who has 
seen the crepe taken from the door 
with the firm assurance that when the 
holder of the mortgage came next day 
he would go away satisfied, and the 
little home would remain the same. 

He is successful who has learned 
how to sell. Not the technical make 
up of a company or a policy, but that 
238 


A SUCCESSFUL AGENT 


his mission is to sell protection, not 
policies; incomes, not policies; to 
create estates and not to sell a policy 
for so much premium and get so much 
commission. The one great goal in 
front of the insurance agent should 
each day he to make one sale today, 
so that to his credit will be that satis¬ 
fying act of doing a good to his fellow 
man, and by that good he will thereby 
strengthen himself in every way. 

He will be a success if he holds 
clearly before him that broad vision 
of his profession which will enable 
him to plan and systematize his work 
and make his plans not for a day, but 
for a year. Yes, for 5, 10, 20 years 
—for his life. But he cannot be a suc¬ 
cess unless he is thoroughly in love 
with his work. He must love it for 
its own sake. The great Audubon 
loved one bird in his orchard and 
studied him thoroughly, and to him 
came thousands of birds to have their 
histories written. Edison loved his 


239 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


work and nature crowned his efforts 
with the greatest invention of the age. 
And if you so love your work that 
your very life is wrapped up in it, 
then success will crown you. And then 
when you know you love your work 
and have adopted it as your life work, 
plan it and know it, and then you can 
think about it without making 
thoughts your aim, and you can dream 
of it without making dreams your 
master, and then just so surely as the 
sun shines will the golden dreams of 
such an earnest, sincere man lead him 
directly to the end of the rainbow 
and to the pot of gold, and not only 
that but to the sunset of the perfect 
]ife crowned with that success which 
truly merits the approbation: “Well 
done, thou good and faithful servant”. 


240 


Our Duty to Our Country 


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CHAPTER XIV 
Our Duty To Our Country 

A few days ago the files of 1917 
closed on a year which was probably 
the most momentous that the world 
has ever seen. 

The year which has just sped into 
history is one which has been memor¬ 
able from a great many standpoints. 
A strenuous business year, and yet 
one which has been full of success and 
progress for all of us. A year in 
which our patriotism has been tested 
and tried, and yet one full of sadness 
for this entire United States. A year 
in which many home ties have been 
broken, never to be reunited. A year 
in which the spirit of Washington has 
gone forth and met again and joined 
hands with the great LaFayette un¬ 
der the two beautiful banners, the 
Tri-color of France and the Stars and 


243 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


Stripes of our own Nation, and stand¬ 
ing at attention and listening to the 
mingled strains of the Marseilles and 
the Star-Spangled Banner and have 
pledged anew their allegiance to each 
other in this great battle for human¬ 
ity, for liberty and freedom of the 
world. 

It has been a year in which the Na¬ 
tion has been introduced to trench 
warfare; a year in which our boys 
have been called onto foreign soil in 
the defense of liberty, and this soil 
will be enriched by their blood given 
in their country’s cause. A war the 
like of which has never before been 
fought in all the world. A war in 
which the individual is lost sight of; 
where victories are not won at close 
range, but it is in reality a battle of 
nations in which the victory is not to 
an army, but to a nation or to many 
nations. Into the trenches, in the 
front line of this great war with all 
their horrors and all their hardships, 
244 


OUR DUTY TO OUR COUNTRY 


has gone the flower of the American 
army, and some of the best manhood 
of our nation, and there have they 
stood side by side with out allies for 
the cause of liberty. Along this battle 
line thousands and hundreds of thou¬ 
sands have lain down their lives with¬ 
in the past four years, and here have 
been fought the bloodiest battles of 
which we have any record in all of 
our world’s history. 

But into these trenches one day 
there came a new flag. It was the 
Stars and Stripes. It was planted 
there; it was planted firmly, and there 
it will stay until this terrible war is 
over. And on that day when that flag 
appeared, there went up a great cheer 
from the weary battle-worn soldiers 
of our allies, a welcome to our flag, 
a welcome to the flag that has always 
been victorious, and on that day the 
boys in khaki faced “ No Man’s Land ’ ’ 
without fear of death, because they 
were soldiers of the United States— 


245 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


they who have ever gone where honor 
pointed or duty called and always 
have carried Old Glory to victory and 
returned it with its folds clean and 
free from stain. 

And on this eventful day when 
our boys fired the first shot in Prance 
a great voice went rolling across the 
sea. It was the same voice heard in 
1861 which then said, “We are com¬ 
ing, Father Abraham 100,000 strong”, 
and as it rolled across the waters it 
gained fullness and sweetness and 
strength from the waves of the ocean 
and the blue of the skies, and that 
voice on that day pledged to those boys 
in khaki the united support and back¬ 
ing of the United States. It said to 
those boys, “The United States is not 
only the same grand old United States; 
but she is a united people of the 
United States, and we are with you 
and back of you for every dollar of 
our worth and every ounce of our man 
246 


OUR DUTY TO OUR COUNTRY 


power and every drop of our na¬ 
tion’s blood”. 

That voice was the voice of a giant 
—the giant of freedom and liberty. 
In 1861 the nation was torn by a 
revolution which laid waste our land 
and made it desolate, but nature with 
her vines and flowers has obliterated 
every mark of that conflict which de¬ 
faced the landscape. The roar of the 
cannon had long since been succeeded 
by the sad sweet notes of the dove 
while time had healed every wound 
and with fingers deft had erased the 
malicious hate from every heart. For 
many years with equal warmth the 
same bright sun has shown over all 
and the same pure stars have their 
ceaseless vigils kept above the silent 
chambers of our soldiers dead. From 
the mingled dust of these heroes of 
the Blue and the Gray had bloomed 
the flower of hope—the hope that war 
had forever gone from us as a people. 
And as the years rolled on and just 
247 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


at the time when the last survivors of 
the Blue and the Gray are crossing 
the shadowy line, their backs to time 
and their faces to eternity, a great foe 
invaded our peace and quietude, and 
at a call from our nation the descend¬ 
ants of these same heroes whose mem¬ 
ory we equally cherish promptly came 
to the country’s protection, and side 
by side are they found marching un¬ 
der our dear old flag, protecting its 
shining folds from every stain and 
planting it in triumph wherever 
honor points or duty calls. 

And on this day the Peoria Life, 
its every officer and its every employee 
and its every agent, wherever he may 
be, joins all the true, loyal citizens 
in extending to our allies across the 
sea a hospitable hand that never 
struck a defenseless foe, and never 
knew dishonor. 

God bless our old nation. We 
would not part with one atom of her 
soil or one line of her history. Would 
248 


OUR DUTY TO OUR COUNTRY 


that I might weave a fitting garland 
for her brow! Would that I had the 
genius of a Raphael that I might 
paint her as she is! Would that I 
had the descriptive powers of a Byron 
that I might portray the lives of her 
heroes, but even then I should be un¬ 
able to pay a just and fitting tribute 
to the first three khaki boys who to¬ 
day sleep on the sunny slopes of 
France as our first fatalities on the 
field of battle in this great conflict. 
All honor to them and all honor to all 
of our boys! May their names grow 
brighter with each coming sunrise, 
and their victories brighter with each 
setting sun. May they with sword 
and gun write more enduring and il¬ 
lustrious names on the pillars of the 
temples of the eastern hemisphere 
than those who have ever gone before, 
and may never a one of them forget 
their God or betray their country. 

And what is your duty and my duty 
today? Every boy who has gone to 
249 


SUCCESS IN LIFE INSURANCE 


France is our boy. Not your boy or 
my boy but OUR boy, and we owe to 
them and to each of them the support 
and loyalty of a father to a son. Many 
of them who go across the sea will 
never come back. It is my hope that 
not too many of them will stay, and 
as they go over the top may the great 
God of the universe be with them and 
protect them. It is wonderful, it is 
grand to die for one’s country, and 
under such a flag as ours, and in the 
cause for liberty! 

President Wilson is the President 
of the United States. He is not there 
by my vote nor by any of my assis¬ 
tance at the election, but today he is 
my President and is entitled to my 
undivided loyalty and support—and 
he has it. This is no time for argu¬ 
ments—no time for delays. Every 
delay means more of the lives of our 
boys over there. This is not the time 
for party lines to be drawn. Today 
250 


OUR DUTY TO OUR COUNTRY 

there should be only one party, and 
that a party of VICTORY. 

So one great service of the Peoria 
Life Insurance Company is loyalty. 
Complete loyalty to our nation, to our 
President and all of his plans for con¬ 
servation and protection of the United 
States, and a complete, true and last¬ 
ing loyalty to every one of our boys 
in the Army and Navy. The kind of 
loyalty which strengthens him while 
fighting, both with our money and 
with our patriotism. The kind of 
loyalty and patriotism which on bend¬ 
ed knee and with reverence places a 
wreath where he sleeps wrapped in 
the folds of the Star-Spangled Ban¬ 
ner. 


251 
































































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